Selfsufficientish.com

Good Afternoon all!

I have an exciting project coming up where I am going to do some sustainability work abroad.
Part of the challenge is coming up with workshops to do with children (ages 6+) to teach them anything from the ideas of sustainability, environment, reduce reuse recycle, climate change, etc....

Therefore, any ideas really appreciated!! They have to have a practical aspect to them, where the kids can hopefully get involved.

Ideas so far:

- Making compost
- Making things out of waste (eg cushions out of soft plastic) any others?
- Making instruments out of packaging and other stuff.
- Learning about plants, seeds, etc...

I really look forward to your ideas...

Duncan

Hi Duncan,
I have small children myself and they love to help me. They love to make new soap balls from soap scraps mixed with water, perhaps some herbs or Essential Oils. We save almost finished candles and make them into new candles. Beeswax candles they love to make as well.
At my childrens school we organised a project with sheep shavings, washing the wool, spinning the wool, colouring the wool with onion skins and other herbs. At the end they have woven the wool and also have made felt with the wool.
Hope this helps some,
Maria

Hi Duncan
What a great opportunity. Well done to you and do have fun.

What about taking yogurt pots (I suppose it depends where you are going) and painting them with acrylic paints to make pots to plant the seeds in.

I'm sure I can think of more ideas but it'd be useful to know where you are going.

Cheers
Zoe

A project I want to do with my own kids...

I plan to use some junk (an old bicycle wheel, some sort of pole and some yoghurt pots etc) to make a sort of windmill for my allotment.
I want the windmill to make noise and move things to scare the birds off my seeds
I reckon it could be an ongoing project...as we find junk that will make a good cog or catch wind we will add it to our project to see just how big our "miraculous wind contraption" can grow

I hope it will make my kids look at 'rubbish' in a whole new light, they understand the basic principle of recycling but it tends to be viewed as an activity 'that will please mum' rather than something they do naturally and for fun.

I have a friend who runs junk music work shops. Drums made out of bean tins and chimes made out of keys etc - its great fun!!

I'm running my first forest schools session tomorrow - for ideas, look at forestschools.org, or google forest schools.

There are books out there one which springs to mind "eco-art" maybe you could get a good deal second hand on amazon?