Friday 8 March 2013

Who needs a parachute?!

The two after-school sessions I run at Holt have two very different groups.  Thursdays group like doing things, so got stuck into building our bug hotel.   In the Friday gang, only a few got involved in finishing the bug hotel they much prefer to play games and only look to the adults when things go wrong.
This Thursday we were a few members down due to birthday parties etc so the adults almost outnumbered the children.  With it drizzling, we spent quite a long time in the shelter just talking and swapping stories and watching the smoke coming from the storm kettle.  Once outside it was time for cutting up pallets to make our multi storey bug hotel.  The group took the wheel barrow off and filled it with leaves, dead grass, bits of old bamboo cane and anything else they could fill the rooms with.

The Friday crew found a new use for the platform in the tree, we had made a new ‘A’ frame ladder to make get up into it easier and they started jumping out.  The drop is about five feet, so not too far and they were getting really good at landing and rolling by the end of the session.  Some of the smaller members needed a little help but then started producing some interesting acrobatics on the way down to the ground whilst holding on to Charlie’s hands.  It is nice to see play always evolving in our little space.  One of the boys who had come a cropper with a stick earlier and had sat out for a while got back in to the swing of things by pruning back an over grown hedge with the loppers and then using the raisings to build up the dead hedge around our shelter.
Our strawberry patch has been dug over and had compost mixed in so is ready for the plants in the last week before the Easter break.  We have to also build a new wood store as we took our present one down to use the walls to stuff the bug hotel before Easter.  Next week firesteels and tree houses but not altogether!







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