Pizza, Highfields, Ant Motorways Art and Adventuring

We went to an organised pizza making activity at Pizza  Express, for FREE, on Tuesday, here they are.

YUM... thank you very much Pizza Express, and Lizzie who organised it.

Next we popped along to the fantastic Highfields Adventure Playground.  This exciting place has had a lot of hard work from some very commited individuals who have fought off closure, and the Health and Safety army to create a wonderful exciting adventurous place to play.  For more information about the adventure playground movement click here.  Evan was delighted that the water pump was on, and set to work, with a team of others creating a river, this led down to make a moat around the roundabout.  The scenes that followed were extremely muddy and full of smiles and laughter.  Meanwhile Autumn and Safia created a little garden of "night flowering plants".  We got this message from Jill, who is a core figure in our Home Ed meet at Higfields after this day.

"Well that’s it – Highfields is out for the summer. There were 90 children and 42 adults and the strawberries and scones were devoured in a flash! 

What a year it's been ... but yesterday ended on a high note and it is a very different place to what it was just over twelve months ago. Times were bleak in the winter of 2013. We had fought our own battles to keep the group running after the previous organiser left, but then to top it off the council included the playground in its round of cuts and wanted to withdraw funding. At that point they had already made detrimental changes. Some weeks there might only be four or five of us there. The outlook was grim. But this was one of the best user led turn arounds I’ve ever seen. At the fore was the 'Friends of Adventures' but the protest was strong from everyone, not least our group. Funding bids were made, hundreds of emails sent, weekly multi-agency meetings and a steering group set up. The council had to rethink. Today, although it is stlll owned by the council, it is managed by a community charity and new staff have been employed. The children have reclaimed it and their writing is back on the wall (literally). 

It is now even more a true adventure playground than it ever was. The next target is the replacement of the huge rope swing that the council took down. When that arrives it will be symbolic. 

Yesterday was symbolic too, because Highfields is about the children and home educated children have played there for 15yrs. So to see 90 of them up to their necks in sand and water (again literally!) and fun was good to see. "

After dance class the next we popped along to Longshaw, as the end of our work on our house meant we could escape.  There just so happened to be a home ed meet there at the same time.  We gatecrashed, and Evan made a new friend in Nat.  They go to Forest School together, and they have played alongside each other before, but this time they actually connected, and Nat asked Evan to be his friend. :)  Along with the other older ones in the group, they found a brilliant set of hide out spaces among the bracken.  They used sticks to identify to each other where they were when the bracken was too high to see.  There were a variety of different spots, a fireplace, which the boys had created a path to with clues of charcoal, a little place to be on a rock, a look out and a big dip.  they were very content in their adventures and want to visit here again with the others.   Meanwhile, Autumn created some rock pictures on the clay bank by the river.  After this, we visited the ant motorway, and Evan led a commentary of it.

Science day - Plants

Today, with another family, we did a number of explorations and experiments to explore plants and how they grow.  To plan for this day we have been growing beans with different variables changed.

#1 - Demonstrating oxygen evolution during phosynthesis using Cabomba pondweed

This was such fun, we followed a number of the experiments in the linked to page.

#2  Exploring the variables affecting growth on a bean plant

Excitingly our beans planted at the same time about 3 weeks ago showed differences depending on their environment.  The plants germinated at Su's house (warmer and brighter) grew really well, whilst ours failed to thrive. The photographs give an indication of what they were like.  The bean which had been left without water failed to germinate at all, whilst the bean with water but no light germinated and grew quite well, but the small leaves which grew remained small and yellow.  The plant appeared to try hard to find light, seeking out fractions of light at the edge of the cupboard it was in.

#3 Exploring the different parts of a flower

#4 Hapa Zome - Exploring the colours found in plants

Hapa Zome printing is the process of extracting the colour from a plant by bashing and thereby transferring the colour onto fabric underneath.  It was the most wonderful satisfying experience and everyone enjoyed it, including me and Su.

Plant veins in action

Responding to a query of Autumn's the other day about "the weird line" on leaves and stems, we explored this using a simple experiment with a stick of celery and water with red food colouring, a day later and here was the result.