Continuing our 'Old Town Bloom on Tour' project we planned a series of sessions with the marvellous Naomi from Animal Teach at Chi Community Cafe
Our first session was on February 16th - with the theme of Bugs Hotels and the creatures that may live inside them.
Bug Hotels:
For our session in the morning we constructed bug hotels from kits, then decorated them with our favourite pencils - Stabilo Woody 3 in 1's! The best purchase for your travelling workshop kits (they are great for cardboard, wood, paper and windows).
Lessons learnt - we invested in the wrong type of bug houses, these were kits from a craft supplier and were quite frankly awful to build and will be useless as bug houses. In the past we have upcycled plastic milk bottles into bug hotels, but what happens to these in the long term? So we are definitely going to revisit bug hotels!
Bugs:
In the afternoon Naomi introduced us to the world of bugs and we looked at them using a microscope. It was a fascinating peek into the microscopic world
What else have we been doing?
As part of this funding, we have been looking into ways that we can be more environmentally conscious when running workshops.
We invested in some paper pot makers, as we think these will make a brilliant addition to our travelling kit for workshops (which we hope to add to our cart, more about that soon). We really want to move away from using plastic pots, especially for starting off seeds, so these could be perfect, if you have the time and patience to create them. We have already heard back from others, that they might be a bit too fiddly for tiny people, so we would also recommend saving up your toilet rolls! (google toilet roll seed starters).
New in the kit: Field Studies Council guides - these are laminated, so easy to clean! Instead of printing out lots of handouts that may end up in the bin, we thought that purchasing brilliant accessible information about wildlife would be a great resource to have - there is even one about clouds! Check out the range here: Field Studios Council
Also: At every session we have been giving away sunflower seeds, wildflower seeds (from plantlife) paper plant pots and notebooks - so that everyone has a chance to grow something. The notebooks were sourced from an auction site, who were selling off surplus and we personalised them with our stamp!
Lovely Phil from Chi Community Cafe dropped off some our packs at a Local Primary School - Bridgewater Park Primary School, he even took along our sign for photographs!
Old Town Bloom on Tour has been funded by the LCR Combined Authority - Community Environment Fund. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter - so follow along as we go on our adventures Did you know that you can also follow along with other projects funded by the LCR Combined authority - Community Environment Fund - including our friends VPET!