Creative Natives has experienced a fantastic first half term. The autumnal leaves, hedgerow berries and seeds have provided us with plenty to do and make, such as natural paints and inks, collages and beautiful mobiles.We have spent time in a woody area towards the end of Morlais Ridge listening to all the sounds and looking at all the colours and the children painted some inspired pictures under the trees. The children also went hunting for hidden objects not normally found in the woods and things that are.
One Wednesday morning on the beach felt very autumnal, rock pooling in wellies. A couple of common crabs were found along with mussels, barnacles and lots of wet clothes! Warm drinks from the flask went down well. The toddling scavengers bought back plenty of treasure to make a wonderful work of art and some of the smaller stones and shells were stuck onto fish shaped boxes to take home.
During our toddler paced walks we came across many interesting things: A woodpeckers hole; Garden spiders and their glistening webs; Listening to noisy marsh frogs by the river; Bean galls induced on a willow leaf by the grub of a sword fly; and lots of Cinebar moth caterpillars on the poisonous plant ragwort.
On site, our regular visit from a male pheasant has fascinated some of the children, as have some of the strange looking mushrooms, like the shaggy inkcap and the pleated inkcap. The former made excellent ink for our goose feather quills. It was much more effective than the ink we got from sloes which we picked the previous week.
Many of the boys and girls have enjoyed working on the vegetable patch, digging in the soil, raking leaves and building a fantastic castle from hay bales (with the grown ups help!). So far we have only experienced a couple of rainy days which were great. The children enjoyed splashing in the puddles and floating their leaf boats. The tipi was a bit leaky but it did the job for activities when we needed some shelter.
Creative Natives has lots of plans for the coming half term, with Halloween, Bonfire Night and Christmas to look forward too. We will be focusing on the needs of the birds and animals over winter, building shelters and feeders for them. There will be lots to make and do for us too with pumpkins in October and beautiful natural presents, cards and decorations for Christmas. With warmth from the occasional bonfire, woolly
hats, boots, gloves, and, of course, hot chocolate, the Creative Natives are going to have a ball!
If you feel like joining us for one and a half hours a week give me a call on 01797 223121, Sam.
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