Compostgirl's Tudor House project

Compostgirl ( aged 8 ) has been learning about the Tudor period at school. Over half term they were asked to do a project on Tudor Houses. Compostgirl decided to make a model and then do an annotated drawing. She researched from books and online, what the houses were made out of, what different houses would have been like (depending on how poor or rich you were) and decided to make a half timbered house, of the sort a moderately wealthy person would have lived in.

Its her idea and choice of materials, we have helped her a bit with the trickier bits like cutting up wood strips and sawing things, and finding materials for her.. She took a cardboard box, some polystyrene sheet to make up the jetty(the sticking out upper floor) covered it all in white card to look like the outside lime washed wattle and daub,




stuck thin black painted balsa strip (which she painted and cut up) on the box for the beams



and made a roof out of corrugated card, which she painted to look like a tiled roof.

She has cut up lots of small pieces of black wood strip and glued them in place to look like the beams. She also made little windows out of plastic sheet and glued them in place, surrounded by more "beams"





The roof was also dabbed with green paint, to look like moss, and she added some black staining around the chimneys to look like soot stain.



I know my lovely daughter is good at making things and has a huge love for history but I am astonished at how good this model is! I know she has had a fair bit of help from us, but in every case it was help to do things she tried to do herself but couldn't quite manage. Things like making the long strips of wood using a power saw(!) She did mark and cut the small beams herself having first painted them.

She has also drawn an annotated diagram of her house and written an explanation of what Tudor houses were like.



It has taken her 2 weeks to do and she has spent so much time and effort on it and it looks amazing!

Chimney detail




Front door detail



The finished article, front view



Side view.



Back view.



And finally, the front view again but with a very proud Compostgirl next to it.

A crafty time, for me to enjoy........

A wreath made by a then 7 year old Compostgirl, the sort of thing we will be doing.



Twig stars, wands and wreath bases. I have also made some twig hearts. The bundle of sticks is not cinnamon but red dogwood.



Weeping silver birch wreath base, ready for decoration with greenery or ribbon ( or both!)



A recycled materials wreath. Plastic strapping, oddments of ribbon tied around and trimmed.



I have spent a very pleasant afternoon and evening making christmas-y stuff(wreaths, twig stars, ribbon wreaths, Gods Eyes, glitter pinecones, paper craft trees and flowers, paper fabric with pressed flowers etc) in preparation for a craft workshop I am running next week for various nursery staff and teaching staff. :-)

They get to make stuff from natural and recycled materials (which I provide, harvested from the garden or from the Scrapstore) with a bit of my help and also any new ideas they bring along ...and hopefully they can take their ideas back to their children and the children get to make the things as well.... :-) and I get paid for making fun stuff and passing on my ideas :-)

I now have a nice collection of things to show them, step by step photos to show on the day as a powerpoint presentation and I have written up a "how to " sheet and also done the risk assessments for making the stuff. I have just added where to get specialist supplies (raffia, brown paper bags, newsprint paper for printing wrapping paper, cones if they can't forage for them ...)I hope they can get twigs and suchlike!

I am running all the ideas past Compostgirl this weekend to see what age level I should say can do the crafts, and how I can modify them so younger ones can have a go...she loves helping me to make the things I am running sessions about and I give her extra pocket money as "my helper"


I also have some good news. I have just heard (literally just!) I have been accepted on to a an adult teaching/lecturing/tutoring course, the PTTLS course, 80% funded so I only have to pay a small amount towards it!

It starts soon, one day a week ...until end Feb. I am doing a lot of adult training workshops, so it was a good idea for me to actually have the qualification to go with the work I have been doing.

You know, I sometimes think it would just have been easier if I had done a PGCE all those years ago when I was first offered a place back in 1995, rather than ending up doing things the way I have done, what with the Forest School Leader training and now the lecturing course.

But then, I wouldn't have got all the interesting bits and bobs of experience along the way, would I? and I never really wanted to be a teacher in a school...teach people things, yes! ..but not be in a school..(IYKWIM ) ..not my cup of tea I suspect!

Off to make more crafty things for next week and to take some pictures of the most amazing Tudor House Compostgirl has made for a school project...watch this space!

A very busy half term holiday

As well as having fun with Compostgirl, I spent the half term holiday week leading up to Samhain/Halloween working with groups of children on various seasonal craft activities...mainly involving pumpkins ( now there's a surprise!)







All told I have been involved, one way or another, with the carving of 54 pumpkins, over the last 5 days in October.....



On one of my days off working we went round to see our very good friend M and her 2 lovely children for the day, we had lunch, the children played, M and I chatted and we carved ( you guessed it!) pumpkins!



Here is Compostgirl carving pumpkins with her friends.



The craft sessions I ran also involved lots of glue and glitter and orange paint





And lots of bats and spiders, of course!

I DO like my work :-) (even though it took a very long time to wash out all the glue and glitter in my hair.....)

but I think I will give pumpkin a miss for a few days...... :-))

Update on Spike the hedgehog

When Spike the little Hedgehog was handed over to us after being found on the School playing field, he was a weak and poorly little hoggie. He only weighed 150 g and was desparately in need of food and water and warmth.

Once I got some drink and a bit of food down him he perked up and has twice in the past 3 weeks been into school to have a look at the children and for us to answer questions about hedgehogs.

We weighed him on 18th Oct and he had increased in weight to 300g....so he doubled his weight in 5 days!



he is getting bigger and eating more and more cat food so we weighed him again on 30th Oct and he weighed in at 450g.....



and when we weighed him again last night, he was a wopping 550g!





At this rate he will be big enough to release outside before the end of November and he will be big enough to go into hibernation!

Oh, and he looks a bit dusty in these pictures because we have just scrubbed out his cage, dried it, put in fresh bedding and dusted it with Diatom powder to kill off mites and fleas.... he isn't really grey!

Wonderful new hen run!

Wonderful new hen run! To go with the wonderful new hen house !

Built by clever Compostman, as a ( very) belated birthday present for me...and to go with the house he has already built for me....



Except we have swapped things around, so the new run now goes with Cluckingham Palace ( a boughten house) and the home made house (called Peckingham Palace) is now attached to the run which came with Cluckingham Palace ....

It does all make sense, honest!

Anyway, its a wonderful, wonderful present, the hens love it and it will make my life a lot easier, as all the hens now have lots of dry, sheltered space if they have to be left shut in for any reason.

THANK YOU lovely Compostman, you are a star and I love you very much!

Ruby and the chicklets, week 5

The Cream Legbar chicks are now 5 weeks old and have largely lost all their baby fluff and have proper feathers now. The cockerel is a bossy little chap to his sisters and steals their food whenever he can. He comes running to me whenever I go outside, though! I think he has worked out I mean food is on the way!



I turn out Ruby and the chicklets into the veg patch every day, they are safe from the other hens in there although not from cats!



They love to scratch and furtle around in the soil, eating all sorts of stuff. Ruby is a very attentive mother and teaches them well.



Ruby and the chicklets dust bathing in the sunshine. See how big the chicks are, now!

Spike goes a visiting....

Spike went a-visiting yesterday !

I am rather unwell with a sore throat and cough so Compostman stepped in for me and helped at Eco club yesterday. As Spike is now recovered and eating well, Compostman took him into school as the plan was to make some hibernation houses for insects and things...

and Spike was an absolute star! He uncurled and trotted around the inside of the circle of children sat on the floor, stopping to sniff at them and generally be very friendly. The children adored him!

Compostman talked about hibernation and how/why hedgehogs hibernate. He also discussed with the children about what happens to the late summer baby hedgehogs and why "autumn orphan" hedgehogs are unlikely to survive the winter and hibernation without human help. (For those who don't know, a hoggie needs to be at least 500g to survive hibernation and waking up in spring, and the late babies often don't have time to get to this weight before the food runs out)

Compostman mentioned that Spike wasn't really ill, as such, when he was found on the school field (although he looked it) but was just cold and hungry and thirsty. When Compostman added that Spike had probably got separated from his mum, several of the children had to be stopped from running up the field to look for her....ah bless!

Spike is now back in his cage, in the warm, tucking into yet more cat meat and has gained 10% of his body weight in 1 day... !

Spike, our new house guest!

We have a new guest at Compost Mansions. A young Hedgehog! He was found wandering around the School Field and so we were asked to take him home, as we have reared hedgehog babies before. He was in a bad way from cold and lack of food and he is too young and small to make it through hibernation this winter and would die if he tried. He only weighs 150 g and ideally needs to be around 500g to make it through hibernation AND WAKE UP AGAIN ( very important, that last bit!)

So this poor, small, lost little baby needed help. Urgently.

He perked up a bit that evening when we put him in a spare rabbit cage we had in the shed, with a nice warm dark bed and cat meat to eat, and we thought we had sorted him out, but the next day he had started to wobble when he walked - never a good sign in an animal!

So, we brough the cage in the house, I put him in a box by the woodburner to warm up and then dropper fed him rehydration fluid.

And gave him a massage ( with all those spines, tricky, that! )

until he roused enough to eat a bit of mashed cat meat from my hand.

BTW, do NOT give bread and milk to hedgehogs as it is VERY bad for them!

He is now stuffing his face with cat food today and making a hell of a mess in the cage.....

We have called him "Spike".

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Oh! Such joy ( well a new recycling scheme, anyway.....!)

Today we had an unexpected delivery. A new Recycling Bin!

You may remember my previous rants on the subject of recycling , in which I mention that we don't get any doorstep collection out here in the wilds of rural Herefordshire.

But,Herefordshire has now decided to extend the scheme to ALL its residents so everybody gets some recyclables collected from their home. (Well, it, and all Councils, are now legally obliged to do so ,
by legislation I helped to campaign for! )

As an Environmental Consultant and activist I also spent a huge amount of time in the late nineties vigorously campaigning to stop the building of an Incinerator in the town of Kidderminster. This was meant to "dispose" of a large chunk of Herefordshire and Worcestershire's joint household waste. I rather suspect that IF they had managed to build this incinerator I would not now be feeling so happy as "Energy Recovery" from the incinerator would have counted as "recycling". So, I guess, there would have been no Big Green Recycling Bin sitting outside my back door?

But we won the fight against the Kidderminster Incinerator (hurrah) and the Incinerator plan "went up in smoke". And lo, I have a Recycling Bin.

Here it is in all its glory...




along with a calendar, a handy leaflet telling us what we can put in our bin and a sticker to go on the front of the bin.

Here is a list of the items that you will now be able to recycle from your home:

Paper - including newspapers, magazines, phone directories, catalogues, office paper, junk mail, greetings cards and envelopes.
Cardboard - light card and corrugated cardboard, egg boxes and kitchen/toilet roll tubes.
Metals - food tins and drinks cans, aerosol cans and sweet/biscuit tins.
Glass - bottles and jars of all colours.
Plastic - all plastic bottles. Plastic containers including yogurt pots, margarine/ice cream tubs, fruit/vegetable punnets, cream/ custard pots, cake/pastry trays and soup/sauce pots.
Cartons – including milk, juice, smoothie cartons, fabric conditioner, soup, chopped tomato and custard cartons.

So...finally .....we have a recycling bin at Compost Mansions and we can stop filling up our car boots with recyclable stuff "just in case" we go near a recycling point.

We will still need to go to the Household Recycling Site with textiles, batteries, CF lights, wood, electrical goods, soil and rubble etc, but this bin will make SUCH a difference to us! Apart from anything else, the bottles, cans etc can go in the bin, outside, rather than filling up boxes in the boiler room, or in my car boot!

Also the 100g (ish) of landfill waste that we do put out each week at the moment for the landfill collection (all else is reused, recycled or composted here) is largely yogurt or margarine cartons, so we will now be able to reduce the stuff we send to landfill even more, maybe even down to a true Zero Waste level! Previously the recycling system would not take these items, but the building of a new Materials Reclamation Facility has changed all that. |

All collected recycling will be transferred to a new material recovery facility (MRF) being built at Norton, Worcestershire. This new facility will sort materials using state of the art technology into their different types ready for recycling.

So, we will be able to put these items inside our lovely new recycling bin!

Hurrah! I am a very happy Compostwoman, today! Good on you Herefordshire Council, for doing this...!