Toddlers and Tools!!

Idris's latest passion is tools, more specifically hammers, or 'am' as he calls them. It has been sparked by the cabin building that went on in our garden a couple of weeks ago. It made a huge impression on him as not only was his Daddy wielding tools but his Grandpa (bomp bom) and Dadcu (dee) also. Idris is very much a man's boy..... most female relatives he can take or leave, he will even abandon his Granny's knee if preference for bomp bom!

We have had many conversations about tools since, including a half hour stint sitting on the floor of a certain hardware store comparing the merits of various garden tools and an earnest chat with the man behind the trade counter about the power drills behind the counter and the fact that Bomp bom drank tea too!

Dewi managed to find him a small wooden mallet that seems to satisfy his desperate need to have a hammer in his hand ALL THE TIME!!! I just loved watching him get to work on these wooden off cuts......

Holding them different ways......

Really hitting them as hard as he possibly could, with some fabulous facial expressions to go with it!

Shuffling round and trying it this way.....

..... and this way......

....and this way......

Steadying it with his hand and putting a boot on it just like Daddy does.....

And loving the physical challenge of handling a long piece of wood!

You can't beat the real thing for satisfying toddlers needs and interests...... a toy tool bench just wouldn't have cut it for Idris!! He is still fascinated with the metal hammers though and sidles up to them whenever he can, just touching them with longing in his eyes..... he did sneak one away and as I saw him and was about to ask for it back, he dropped it and split his finger open....... steri strips are a wonderful invention and as usual he was a tough cookie and once he'd stopped being cross about having a bandage around his hand, he was fine and it is healing nicely. Has he learned a lesson from this and now keeps away from the adult tools when Dewi is working? What do you think?? I am watching him like a hawk!!

A Deceptively Sunny Attingham!

During the real cold snap recently I decided that we would wrap up warm and go to Attingham for the first time this year, another National Trust property that we love to visit. The weather report promised sunshine and silly me thought that it might take the edge off the zero degrees temperature promised alongside. So armed with a flask of home-made soup we set forth...... and no, the sunshine didn't warm us, as the bitter northerly winds sweeping across us made it feel well below zero!! Ah well, nothing for it but lots of running around, climbing and jumping off things then! The girls challenged each other to cross a little stream by increasingly wobbly log bridges set over it. I was amused until I remembered that I had no change of clothes and considered how painful the whinging walk to the car might be with a wet through very cold child!!

Scarves were made into flags on poles.......

Tree trunks were made use of.......

Snowy log piles were scaled.......

Ice was broken......

Water was splashed......

And the lovely gardeners shared their bothy and stoked the fire for us to warm our cockles by as we supped our soup and warmed up again!

Eve was taken with this simple display of terracotta pots......

I wonder if the indoor displays were getting more attention than normal due to the frozen conditions stopping play in the kitchen gardens at Attingham also??

Fuelled by hot soup and a sandwich, Idris was much bolder and ventured far off the path into the woods, setting off a determined pace at one point in completely the wrong direction after a lovely labrador puppy that he took a fancy too..... He made me run to catch up with him!!!

RHS Benchmark Scheme Progress

We have continued to work towards RHS level 3 as weather has allowed!! In the picture above, Eve and a (reluctant) Faith are measuring the raised bed. It was 3m20cm by 1m Eve said and she marked it out on a sketch of the bed and then set to work designing the veg planting plan, using symbols for the different veggies that we want to grow, and writing names alongside them. 

We have spent quite a bit of time talking about what we would like to plant, each member of the family has had their own input. I want to grow sweetcorn, courgette and spinach, Dewi wants to grow runner beans and lettuces, Eve wants to grow snap peas and strawberries and Faith wants carrots and radishes. I think that the girl's choices are swayed by previous years when we have grown the same. The veg beds become an outdoor larder for them with the girls harvesting baby carrots and snap peas for a quick munch whenever they feel peckish. It is rare that we ever actually cook any carrots or snap peas from our garden!! As well as talking about what we wanted to plant, we talked about where to put it. I had thought about going through the principles of 'square foot gardening' with Eve but it is fairly technical with spacings for each plant and I didn't want to dim her enthusiasm for planning it out by making it into a chore! Eve was confident that tall plants needed to go at the back of the bed and smaller ones at the front so that they all got adequate sunshine. I only made one tweak to her plan, which was that the sweetcorn plants needed to go in a block rather than a row or they wouldn't produce any ears of corn! I'm going to wait a little to introduce the idea of successional sowing and planting out later in the year in spaces vacated by summer veg, I think that that lesson will happen naturally!

As soon as the temperatures came up a bit more, we planted out the long-overdue sunflowers and snap peas that were still on the lounge windowsill begging for more space! Faith carefully spread hers out by placing the biodegradable pots equal distances apart by eye along the back of the bed.......

She dug a deep enough hole.......

.......made some tears on the bottom of the pot to help the roots make progress downwards.......

....... and carefully firmed the soil around the little pots before watering them in.................

This is Eve working at the front of the bed, carefully planting each pea plant after spreading them out along the bed at equal distances. She has plans to put the nasturtiums (edible flowers for salads etc) in between the peas, and has elected not to stake them as she plans for them to tumble over the side instead. I think this is a good idea and is based on previous year's observations where our pea plants have done very nicely tumbling around without support of any kind!

I am recording this as evidence of section one (some children are participating in the design of the garden), section three (the garden being used as a resources to teach more than one curriculum subject - measuring and areas in working out the size of the bed), and as evidence of the children carrying out gardening skills. 

A Nature Box for the Car!

I made this box up to be kept in the car for the Spring and Summer. Last year I found that we would be out and about, find something that really interested the children, or that we wanted to look up the name of, or we would find THE perfect dipping stream and have no nets. By the time we got home, the moment had passed, or the children were so tired that it wasn't the time to delve into the books. So I had the idea of a nature box to be ready and waiting when we wanted it! It contains:

• nature identification guides for trees, flowers, birds, animals and insects
• a sketch book and pastels
• bug boxes with magnified lids
• pond dipping nets
• ziploc bags to keep finds in
• washed out hoummous pots and a packet of tissues to protect finds like birds egg shells, dragonflies,  old wasps nests and so on that we find.
• A white bottomed tub for putting some stream water in to keep our finds safe whilst we look at them.

I'm looking forwards to using them..... any more suggestions for the box?

Taking Part in the RHS Benchmark Scheme

I chatted to the staff at the RHS stand in the Education Show earlier in the month and they were keen for us to sign up and work through the Benchmark Scheme. At first read through it appears VERY school orientated and it is, because it was designed for schools to encourage them to get children gardening. After reading the criteria for each level, I emailed them and double checked that we were OK to take part as a home educating family as the rewards for completing each level are fantastic. They replied that we were fine to continue on to level three which is about where we are at with our gardening, so we're off, I will ask about level four later. They understand that a family won't have the same evidence as a school and asked that I made it clear when I sent the evidence in that we were an HE family so they could review it accordingly! As I like to be an organised bod, I cut and pasted the information for level 3 into a table in a slightly adapted format to suit HE, and left space to jot down notes and plans for gathering the required evidence, most of which can be photographs at this stage. You can download the level three record sheet from google docs, you just need a google account to access it!

Today we re-potted the sunflower and pea seedlings that we planted at the beginning of March, (thinking that they would be out of doors by now). Unfortunately the continued snow and icy temperatures have meant that they are still on the lounge windowsill and struggling in the egg boxes and ice cream cones that they were sowed into. The girls handled the seedlings very carefully and gently and they were re-potted into recycled cardboard pots donated by Granny and Grandpa!

We also sowed some nasturtiums into the same pots, I have tried and failed to grow these edible flowers before but have wanted to bring some more flowers into our veg gardening for colour, variety and pest control purposes, so fingers crossed this time! the big raised bed that we have is perfect for nasturtiums to trail over the edge, they will look pretty.

I am collecting our photographic evidence here as we document our other home ed ventures here!! I am putting today's activities down against section one (raising funds through various channels) as I think donations of resources are in the same vein as fund raising, section two (gardening sustainably) as all our seedlings are housed in biodegradable and recycled/recyclable containers, and section three (skills progressing, and working together) as they repotted seedlings, handling them appropriately and worked as a team dividing jobs and resources to complete the task.

First Visit of the Year to 'Our Wightwick'!!

We love Wightwick Manor, a National Trust property not too far from us. We hadn't been yet this year and decided to take advantage of the sunny weather last Wednesday to reacquaint ourselves with our old friend! The photos mostly show Wightwick through Idris's eyes as the girls were out of my sight line for most of the visit!! Above he is enjoying looking out of the window of the little heather thatched house at the top of the orchard, where there have been some new apple trees planted to replace natural wastage of some very old apple trees!

......He was very taken with the scarecrow - but a little cross that he couldn't have his stick!!

It was no matter, there were plenty of sticks to be had, Idris was fickle with his sticks, casting one away when he found a better looking one!

Idris loved the little bridge, stomping back and forwards over it and peering down at the water every so often.

Eve and Faith spent time smashing the ice on the lower pool, it was very thin ice and they found how to send bubbles scudding underneath the ice!

 

 This little water channel connects the upper and lower pools and is usually silted up when we go there. Eve and Faith take great delight in clearing away the debris and watching the water go rushing down the channel, splashing over the little waterfall for Idris to play with.

 Then we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a snow blizzard whilst the sun still shone! When the sun went in and the snow got heavier, we headed for home, after a lovely couple of hours checking up on our favourite haunt!!

Making a Family Garden Journal

I made this journal in 2009 when the girls were 2 and four, it was a really special way to record how we enjoyed the garden together and what things enthused them and caught their attention. I took photographs of some of the plants as they grew and opened, pointing out the small details to the children and recording when they came up.

We added collage and art that we made at various times of the year and using materials from the garden.

Here we all sat and observed a large and beautiful hosta leaf and all drew our own picture of it to go into the journal.

I added photographs of outdoorsy things the girls enjoyed and some pages have notes jotted all over them, a little like a baby record book of things we did and said.

 This was the front cover, we unearthed it during my recent decluttering and the girls loved going through it and hearing stories and adding their own memories and exclaiming over things!

So we have decided to do one again this year just as Idris really begins to enjoy the garden. I made this journal the following year in 2010 but we never did use it so I will make a new year label and we can use it this year. I'm looking forwards to the girls adding their own notes now that they both write, and we have a new veg bed to plant up since we made some changes to the garden. Idris loves the outdoors, he was making me laugh this evening as he headed off out into the rain in his vest and trousers with a hoe in one hand and a fork in the other. He stopped, pulled a face (at the rain?), came back in and asked that I put his top back on him, which I helped with. He then turned and stumped back off up the garden in the rain with his hoe and his fork!!!

 I made the journal with lots of rainbow pages of all different textures of paper and card, some corrugated cardboard covers, and I cut, embellished and glued one of dewi's cardigans around the the cover. it is nicely felted as I shrank it in the wash - oops, but it does make a great journal with buttons to do it up!!!!

A Little Spring Warmth......

I'm writing this on Thursday evening wrapped in a blanket with a hot water bottle on my feet, after spending the day putting coats and hats on and off, shutting doors after children and keeping active to stop the 14C temperature in my house getting to me!! What a change from Tuesday when it was glorious all day, and the back door stood open all afternoon - the thermometer in the house was still reading 14C but I wasn't interested as I was sitting in the garden in a sheltered spot soaking up the sunshine and feeling rather Springlike!!

The children relished the warmth and rapidly shed outer layers to invent pulley systems with ropes o the climbing frame (which they can't actually play on due to the huge stack of wooden cabin pieces stacked underneath it waiting to be built into said cabin).....

Dewi cracked on with his garden to-do list which pretty much resembles my lists in that as one job is ticked off, another one (or two) is added..... he is cutting pieces to box in the new raised veg planter that has been installed......

Faith got creative with the off cuts - this is a swordfish she tells me...... or a sawdust fish as she assembled it underneath where Dewi was cutting wood..... after getting sawdust in her eye she spent the rest of the afternoon with her goggles on..... wish I'd got a picture of that!!

Idris thoroughly enjoyed digging and didn't seem to have dug up too many things that we actually wanted IN the soil.....

Here is the veg planter - it was helping to move this beast over the fence that ended up in broken rib in January - ahem....... it will be worth it to garden at waist height!! And help to hide the ugly pebble dash garage that next door erected two years ago.....

And what was I busy doing? Well it's a tough assignment but someone has to sit still and keep an eye on everyone!!!

And the weatherman? He says we may be back to this by the weekend - booooooo!