Mud painting

As part of our outdoor learning at Heald Place in Rusholme, we've been experimenting with painting using mud.  Children dig up some soil and mix it with food colouring or paint. Some go full Rothko with slabs of earthy colour and texture, some add more soil, scratch marks and some go for simple designs. It's up to them. These were done by Year 2 children. 

You're not going out in that ?

 

On Monday the snow lay thick on the ground at Cheetham CE Primary. But we got our wellies on and went out. 

There were numerous animal tracks to follow: birds, cats and, we think, a fox.  We picked snow-topped  green apples. We made snow sculptures.  We threw snowballs at empty plants pots for a snowy fairground game.  Then the children repurposed the pots as buckets to make snowcastles. One even decorated hers with leaves to make a snow tree. 

Needless to say, the children loved it.  Several said they had never played in snow before. 

A forest in the inner city

 

At Heald Place Primary in Rusholme, there is a lovely wooded area in the far corner of the field. It's full of hazel, sycamore and silver birch.  I've started taking small groups out to our "forest school". We've been hunting for minibeasts, flying "helicopters" (sycamore seeds), making small houses for the "forest people", but the favourite has been making shelters using tarps and bungee cords.   It howled it down today for 15 minutes but our shelter stood firm. 

A city centre harvest

 

A group of families came down to the Great Northern community garden for a real harvest festival. They dug up potatoes, picked runner beans and ate sorrel.  Everyone should have a go at digging up potatoes. 

You hear a lot about mindfulness these days. This is what mindfulness looks like:

Sunflowers and beans in the city centre

 

The planting at The Great Northern in central Manchester has gone well. Sunflowers are lighting up the amphitheatre where we also have potatoes coming on nicely. 

It has been difficult due al the restrictions to get the community side going but we are planning a harvest event in September. The runner beans are looking good. 

An orchard in the city centre

 

I've recently started work at The Great Northern in Manchester as Community Growing Coordinator. We're aiming to get people who live, work or visit the city centre to get involved in gardening. An old water fountain has been filled in with soil and we've planted a range of fruit trees including apple, pear and plum.  I'm hoping they will fruit next year. 

The beds are quite small so we've chosen small, dwarf varieties. If you want to plant to plant a mini orchard, look out for trees on M27 rootstock which will produce fruit on a small tree less than 2m high provided you prune them every year. 

Flower pressing

I've been back in school, working with children of key workers at Heald Place doing a variety of gardening and outdoor learning.

One thing that went well was to dry and press flowers and then to use them to make a card to take home. We picked the flowers and put them between a folded piece of kitchen roll. Then we left them under a heavy book for a week in the classroom.

When we got them out they had dried really well. The flatter, thinner flowers worked best. We then used PVA to glue them to a card and children wrote messages to someone at home.