Things that fly

We had great fun this week making and playing with things that fly.

The balloon rocket was especially entertaining! All you need is a piece of string held tight and a balloon attached to a straw. Blow the balloon, let it go and watch it shoot along the string. You can find out how to do it here http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/toys/balloonrocket.html. It's on a fantastic website called Toys from Trash with hundreds of little toys and experiments to make.

The children also loved this bottle rocket, powered with a bike pump, and we were going to make our own but didn't get round to it!

                                

Some children had another go at making paper helicopters, which worked much better than last year's. We used a pattern from a little book called "Incredible action origami"

Here it is if you'd like to try it at home:

We also made and flew origami paper planes.

There was a great joint effort collage going on.

And finally some learnt how to fold jumping paper frogs, and went on to show their mum how to do it!

(Good tutorial here)

 

Autumnal crafts

Today was our busiest session to date! 

We had a go at a couple of autumnal crafts.

The first one was making imprints into air-drying clay. We collected and brought various natural things, acorns, conkers, pinecones, twigs etc, and made some lovely tiles and other 3D creations.

We also had some great autumnal collages going on, with tissue paper leaves.

Cardboard fun

This week we had fun with lots and lots of cardboard boxes - and brown tape!  There were caves, a large tunnel going to a castle, and of course boxes just for sitting and hiding in.

 

The children had a fantastic time playing and hiding in all the boxes.  Some of them were very disappointed when we had to pack it all up to go home.  It's amazing how much fun you can have some old cardboard boxes.

Bread making

This week we had a go at making bread together.

The children loved using the mill to grind wheat, some of them did it for ages!

They took turn in adding ingredients to the bowl.

Laura also brought some natural yeast so we could have a smell!

They also took turn in mixing the ingredients.

Then they took a bit of dough each and watched the expert in action!

before having a go themselves at kneading.

There was also some serious writing and drawing going on!

 

You've got to love these ;)

Finally after leaving the bread dough to rise more, the children shaped their own little loaves, 

and waited for them to bake.

and here are the results, which were greatly enjoyed by everyone in the park, mmmm . . .