Cake, pies and pomanders

Mincemeat from last week was ready to use - not enough time/ kitchen rather busy to do today, so left behind for another time.  We made one pomander, but spent the bulk of our time on the rather magnificent cake decorating:

More xmas crafts

The last two weeks we've been hard at work painting the salt dough xmas tree shapes, making the mincemeat ready for next time, making real holly and ivy streamers and table decorations.

Xmas tree hangings

Started on salt dough angels, father xmas, snowmen and three ships.  Will cook at home and have planned for xmas wreath, a bit of painting and natural streamers for next couple of weeks.  Return of xmas cake (for decorating and biscuits in last week before xmas!

Willow crowns and wands

We made crowns, bracelets, wands and stars ready for 'The kiss that missed', medieval & magic themed Garden club at Kings Heath Community Centre this Wednesday.

Rangoli Food Art

This week and last week we've been working on making art from food.  We talked about where food comes from - we used a range of fairtrade and locallly sourced foods for the artwork.

Puppet Horses made

We finished 4 ponies ready for horse race at KHCCSP next week!  Doris has named hers Dorothy, Margaret made Ned, and the other two are nameless at the moment.

Great response at the community centre to photos at stay & play in the morning. I've put up print off of blog and KHCCSP garden blog on the boards.  The Children like spotting themselves, friends and asking questions about what people are doing.  Parents very positive about the project too, and much more positive about photos being taken.

27th January

Last week we discussed taking pompom activity further.  We decided to make horse puppets for races at the community centre in a couple of weeks.  Also discussed songs they sang as children, and wondered if we could record and share/swap with the children in future.

20th January at KHCCSP

Shared pompoms and had a play.  Great response from children and parents.  I shared photos with Evergreen residents in afternoon - residents pleased with results and enjoyed playing with Freya again.

13th January Workshop Pompoms

In December I brought in some archive film clips of children playing in the 1940s and began discussion about what residents used to do as children.  I also brought along books of stories, artwork and photos of other intergenerational project work I had been involved in, and start to gauge interest in our project.

Today I brought in wool too, and started to see what crafts residents were already familiar with.  Everyone seemed to have heard of corking and had made pompoms, so this seemed to be a good place to start.  We made eight pompoms between us (photos below) and discussed sharing with Freya's friends at Kings Heath Community Centre Stay and Play.

Freya also had fun playing with wool and residents.