April Fool

The Pioneers started planning their jokes early this year, these fake spilled drinks were great fun to make but do take a long time to dry.


However, they were worth the wait, it seems quite a few parents have had to do a double take this week..

Plaster casting

The Pioneers have spent a couple of weeks working on some plaster casts, first using plasticine to create their moulds. It's tricky remembering that the eventual cast will be a mirror image, especially if yo are doing lettering.

Once the moulds were complete it was time to mix the plaster and pour it in. As it takes a while to set it was a whole week before they could reveal the results,.

Wow, some beautiful designs and lovely choice of colours.

Caterpillars and Easter Baskets

Every year groups from across Bristol get together for a day of fun and games, followed by dancing to with live music provided by some of our older teenagers. Each group also prepares a short performance for everyone, so this year we had a go at making some shadow puppets.

We read the story of the very hungry caterpillar, and everyone decided which puppets they wanted to make and set to work.  They turned out really well, and the children had great fun performing thier show.

 With the Easter holidays approaching we though we'd try our hand at some basket weaving, the children worked really hard on their baskets and I think the results are lovely. I love all the bright spring colours.

Let there be light

As we often go out into the woods, camp or even sleep in our shelters in the woods we all know that a torch is a very useful thing to have. A tiny powerful one that you can hang up in your tent or shelter is even better.

 With that in mind the Pioneers have all created their own tent lights. Small enough to fit in your pocket, but with the homemade diffuser, you can even read by it.

 Of course if you don't feel like a nice quite read there is more active fun to be had with them too

CD recycling

CDs are a common form of plastic waste, once they are scratched they are no use and we've probably all had a freebie with a newspaper or magazine that we didn't really want, so it's always interesting to find new ways to use them.

This one was really simple and great fun. Have a look at our homemade spinning tops.

The legend of the Mermaids Pool

Each year Woodcraft have a project called Hands In, where groups form around the country get together to work on something together. This year theme is story telling, the stories will pass form group to group with each group adding a bti mroe. Finally the completed stories will be circulated later in the year.

Our group was one of the first groups, and our starting passage was about a group of children looking at a map of Kinder Scout and the surrounding area and deciding to visit.

We started by looking at the map ourselves, noticing what kind of features we could find. Then we looked at some photos of the local area. We also found out more about the legend of the Mermaid's Pool on Kinder Scout.

After writing our part of the story the children painted pictures of what they thought the area, and the mermaid might look like.

Pinecones

On one of the few dry afternoons of the holidays I went out for a walk and collected a few pinecones. So many options for things to make with them. We added some bits of felt, coloured pipecleaners and of course a few googly eyes and here's what the Elfins came up with:

 A mouse with pink ears and a long tail

Sky diving pinecones, complete with their own parachutes

 A very colourful bird

The pioneers started out on some bead work, there is still more to go but they are looking great already. They are planing to sew them onto leather bracelets to finish them off but here's a sneak preview of their work so far.