Butterfly on a stick!

We’ve had a fab day today, really enjoyed it. 🙂 We went to Stanmer Park in Brighton, which is only about a fifteen minute drive to the Springwatch Event being held there.

Due to a late to sleep night last night (and I have a blog post to make about that, maybe tomorrow) the children didn’t wake until nearly 8am so we got up, breakfasted, packed a picnic and arrived there around 11am. We parked in the next door university so avoided both the parking charge and the queues to get in (and indeed out) and just walked across a couple of extra fields. The entrance was lined with flags on rustic wooden sticks made of sewn together and drawn on animal pictures which we all really liked and thought we could make something similar to for our own garden.

The actual event was brilliant – probably about 60 stalls or so of all sorts of various things – loads of food stuff, all organic. It all looked and smelt lovely so although we didn’t try we enjoyed looking at that. We went into a tent with sea life stuff and Tarly did some pulses and lentils etc collages (which frankly is what I believe such things are for! 😉 ) while Ady and Davies looked at wildlife photos and talked about photography. Tarly also got to stroke a crab which was pretty cool.

Then we watched some sheep shearing being done for quite a while. Davies loves sheep anyway so we sat on straw bales and watched about 3 being done. We also picked up some of the bits floating about and I showed him how it is stretched and pulled and twisted to make wool and we talked about dyeing and various uses.

There was storytelling and film showing in various tents but we didn’t manage to be organised enough to get to those at the alloted times – to be honest we were pretty full with what we did do anyway so it didn’t really matter. Both the children had a go at badgemaking:

and had a look inside a shepherds caravan where he would have slept during lambing to be close to the ewes. Tarly and I had a quick go at a giant floor puzzle of Sussex and we talked to the National Trust people. There was bird box making going on but there was a massive queue and a charge if you wanted to bring what you’d made home so we decided it was picnic time.
Which of course meant our obligatory self timer shot! 🙂

After lunch we headed into the craft tent where Davies made a bird feeder out of an apple with bird seed and fat shoved into it, Tarly did some colouring of badgers and frogs to make masks and Ady and Davies chatted to the Southern Water people about droughts.

Davies and I then joined the very cool hippies for some clay pot making. Davies had a nose bleed in the middle of the session which the guy was utterly spaced out by, but as usual (he has them quite frequently) Davies dealt with it and carried on – making a really cool little pot which is drying out on our windowsill – he did really well at making a base, really working with the clay and applying the techniques the man showed him, adding sides and then choosing a variety of ‘nature’ stuff to press into it to make patterns like pine cones, leaves, shells and feathers. Ali and Freya joined us at this point while Ady and Tarly went and spoke to the Southern Counties Radio stand people and got some free meadow flower seeds and then Tarly sat and filled in her Ollie Otter water board book.

Ali and Freya left us to go in search of ice cream (there was none 🙁 ) while we visited the environmental bit and made a pledge to save the Earth, wrote it on a footprint sticker and stuck it on the world. Davies promises to keep recycling, Scarlett promises to turn the taps off:

Then we found a stall where they were making casts of animal footprints. Davies was torn between a badger and a fox, deciding on fox in the end. Tarly had no trouble upon hearing the choices of choosing to have a minx!

We then did some sunflower seed planting and making a decoration to stick on the pot. Davies did a picture of himself and a sunflower with ‘Davies’ written on it. I helped Tarly write ‘Scarlett’ and she did a lovely sunflower, a sunshine and a cat. They are also now residing on our windowsill ready to watch them grow.

Then we made butterflies on sticks – butterfly cut outs with pots of paint to dip a finger into and make a dot pattern on one side, folded over to create a symmetrical pattern and then stuck on a stick. These are now proudly under our tree in the garden, fluttering their wings in the breeze!

We had one last wander round, spoke to the Sussex Bat Society and looked at their bats hanging upside down in tanks by which time it was getting on for 3.30pm and most of the tents were looking like they had either run out of things to do or were thinking about packing up so we walked back towards the car.

We’d bumped into Mel, Liam and Lily in the craft tent and saw them again on the way out so we walked with them for a while – and got to meet Mel’s boyfriend Nick, which was cool after having heard lots about him. Liam and Lily had not enjoyed it nearly as much as Davies and Scarlett but I wonder if that is partially a feeling that such pursuits are ‘schooly’ – we all loved it cos although it was all the sort of activity you could easily do at home somehow you never really seem to get round to doing it. So to do it in a field, surrounded by loads of other people doing the same thing and learning off the ‘experts’ is quite a novelty to us – for schooled children I guess that’s just another day really…

We popped home for me to get the phone number of Freecycle Porta Potty People and headed over to my parents where they had the children for an hour while Ady and I headed over to collect said porta potty. We had a demonstration by the previous owners (not as full and comprehensive as it could have been 😉 ) and all thanked each other – us for the free potty, them for the chance to know it was going to be used and useful before going back to Mum & Dad’s for a coffee before coming home.

Ady washed various bit of nature from the childrens’ hair and under their fingernails in the bath while I got roast chicken dinner going and they have been late to sleep again tonight, all of which bodes well (hopefully!) for a not – too early morning! 🙂