Summer Archives - Page 13 of 15

International guerrilla sunflower gardening day

01/05/2011 by Cathy James 4 Comments

Regular readers will know NurtureStore is teaming up with Have a Lovely Time to host a Sunflower Challenge, helping to raise funds for Compton Hospice. You can find out about the challenge here and download a free ebook full of sunflower activities including art, science and maths ideas. If you enjoy the ebook maybe you’d consider supporting the charity and making a donation?

And if you have any spare seeds or seedlings why not join in with some guerrilla gardening? Today is international guerrilla sunflower gardening day, so take your sunflowers out on the streets and get planting in your neighbourhood!

Scout your neighbourhood for a dull and dreary spot of wasteland and brighten it up with some of your sunflowers for all your community to enjoy. We have planted eight of our little sunflower plants on an old train embankment which we pass on the way to school each day, so we’ll be able to keep an eye on their progress.

And to complete our celebration of sunflower day, we have the pleasure of being joined once more by Zoe from Playing by the Book, with another recommendation for a wonderful sunflower themed story book to enjoy with your children. (You can find Zoe’s first story book pick here.) Oh, and Zoe reminded me to give you an update on our progress: our tallest sunflower is at 29cm so far – anyone beat that?

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Measuring Angels by Lesley Ely and illustrated by Polly Dunbar is a book so rich in ideas and inspiration it’s hard to know where to start. It explores bullying and beauty in sensitive and thought provoking ways and is accompanied by gorgeous illustrations bursting with joy and colour. This is a book that will leave you happier, more optimistic about life, and itching to grow your own sunflowers (if you aren’t already doing so !)

A young girl at school is unhappy because she has fallen out with her friend. Hoping for reconciliation the class teacher gets the two girls to work together on the class sunflower growing competition; there are not enough seeds to go round the entire class and so the two girls reluctantly have to share.

At first things don’t bode well.

“When I put soil in the pot Sophie frowned. She snatches the seed and shoved it hard into the soil! I frowned but nobody noticed.”

At the suggestion of their teacher the girls try talking to their floundering seedling, and this along with the help of some fantastic sunflower guardian angels made from paper and glue by the class ensure the blossoming of not only their sunflower but also the rekindling of their friendship.

Seeing the sunflowers all in bloom the teacher realises that measuring for the tallest actually misses the point – beauty and friendship can’t and shouldn’t be measured.

This story is told with real a ring of authenticity; perhaps this is unsurprising given that the author is an experienced headteacher! The well crafted story is perfectly matched by beautifully observed children and mood-liftingly zingy illustrations created by the very talented Polly Dunbar. Even if our sunflowers don’t go on to win Nurture Store’s Sunflower Challenge ;-) , at least the competition has given me a chance to discover this wonderful book I can’t recommend enough.

happily shared with Link and Learn

Counting ladybirds

17/03/2011 by Cathy James 4 Comments

Make a set of number ladybirds, add in some stickers and have some counting fun.

Taking a child’s passion and using it to practise a new skill works really well. I know a child who *loves* stickers – that simple process of peel and stick, peel and stick, gives them immense satisfaction! So I thought I’d use this in a different way to help us work on our counting too. Ladybirds with spots lend themselves to counting games really well, and sticker dots are inexpensive and easy to get hold of.

To start your ladybird counting, first make your ladybirds.

Cut out some ladybird shapes from card.
Write on them numbers one to ten.
Let the children lose with the stickers – putting the right number of spots on each ladybird.

Here are some of the ideas we played:

Can you find the ladybird with a number one?
Can you add the right number of stickers to match the number?
Which ladybird has got the most stickers?
Can you line up the ladybirds from one to ten, or from ten to one.
This ladybird has two spots – can you find a ladybird with one spot more?
How old are you? Can you find a ladybird with the same number of spots?

Sunflower activities

24/08/2010 by Cathy James 2 Comments

Growing sunflowers with children? Download our free Sunflower Activities ebook.

Welcome to the Sunflower Club End of Summer Party

Google tells me that the world’s tallest sunflower grew to over 7 metres tall. So ours aren’t going to break any records but they have reached a very respectable 2m 47 cm. (Did I hear you say ‘wow!’?) They have brought us so much pleasure over the summer and the girls have learned lots of things through growing them. The sunflower height chart we made also revealed that Little isn’t quite as little as she was when we planted our seeds as she has grown 2.5cm too. Although they have grown tall this year the flowers appeared early and have faded now and we’re wondering what to do with the seeds – so if you have any suggestions we would love to hear them.

If you have been growing sunflowers or doing any sunflower linked crafts or activities we would love you to link up with your posts. Please use the linky below to show us how your sunflowers have fared and to give us some craft and activity ideas to use next year.

Thanks for following along in our Sunflower Club – we hope you’ve had fun too.

(You could add a link in your post to here so your readers can come and share all the ideas in the link-up too.)

In our acrchive: all of our sunflower activites.

Flags for sandcastles

21/08/2010 by Cathy James 7 Comments

To make simple flags to deck out a sandcastle: take a rectangle of card, add a design, fold and glue onto a stick.

We’re off to the beach for a few days – see you when we get back!

Happily shared with…

Blackberry picking

18/08/2010 by Cathy James 7 Comments

One of my favourite memories from childhood is going blackberry picking along the lanes near where we lived. The scrapes we got from the brambles were worth it once we’d collect a bucket full of berries for mum to turn into a crumble. I remember always finding the ripest, juiciest, plumpest berry just a little too high to reach.

And one of the best things I think about being a parent is sharing your memories with your children and getting to do all the fun things again with them. This week we’ve made the most of a few sunny evenings and been blackberry picking on the lane nearby. B and L had a little wicker basket to fill – although most of theirs were eaten before we got home.

(If you haven’t got any wild blackberries near you, how about visiting a pick your own farm?)

And what to do with your blackberries?

The girls wanted to make juice so they squashed and sieved some berries and mixed it with apple juice. It tasted great (and gave you a wonderfully purple moustache when you drank it!)

I love to make a blackberry and apple crumble with a topping made from 3oz butter rubbed into 6oz flour, with a 1oz of butter and 3 tablespoons of oats sprinkled in – maybe some cinnamon too.

English Mum has a recipe for blackberry jam I’m going to try.

The Pioneer Woman’s recipe for blackberry ice cream would be great to go in the homemade cornettos we made yesterday.

Do you have any blackberries growing near you? Or any recipe ideas to share?

Homemade ice cream cornettos

17/08/2010 by Cathy James 3 Comments

One of our favourite summer treats is homemade ice cream cornettos. Great fun to make and ever so yummy.

To make some you will need: wafer ice cream cones, soft scoop vanilla ice cream, raspberries, icing sugar, chocolate, fudge

Keep the ice cream in the freezer until you need to use it – you don’t want to melt it and re-freeze it.

(The quantities given below made 10 small cones, with some tasting and nibbling as we went along)

Chop up 100g chocolate and 100g fudge into small chunks.

Melt 200g chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water.

Whizz 100g of raspberries and a dessert spoon of icing sugar to make a raspberry sauce.

Wrap each cornet in a strip of greaseproof paper, held in place with sticky tape.

Paint the inside of each cornet with melted chocolate using a pastry brush. Make sure you get a nice pool of chocolate in the bottom so you get a chocolatey treat at the end of your cornet.

Wait until the the chocolate has set inside the cornet (about 5-10 mins)

Fill with layers of ice cream, raspberry sauce, fudge and chocolate. Work quickly so the ice cream doesn’t melt. Fill over the rim of the cornet, inside the greaseproof paper for that authentic cornetto style.

Pop back in the freezer for a little while so the sauce can set, then remove the greaseproof paper and…

Enjoy!

You can’t beat home made cornettos for a great summer treat.