"Crafternoons" came about as a way of offering crafts for children that don't end up in the bin! We wanted to give children something meaningful to make and for their creations to be use-full with a real-life purpose. 

On top of that, we noticed that many children's craft activities were using materials harmful to the environment, such as glitter, foam board, synthetic fabrics and many forms of plastic. The list could go on. 

This combination of bin-destined 'makes' and toxic-materials raises concern, at a time when we need to be teaching eco-literacy and raising eco-consciousness.

These sustainable children's craft sessions are designed to meet this need, working with three key components: Nature-Friendly Materials, Meaningful Purpose and Open-Age-Appropriate. Creating craft sessions that stick to eco-literacy principles, raise eco-conscious and are sustainable.

Nature-Friendly Materials
We consciously choose materials that are biodegradable and non-toxic for children to work with at our sessions. We know that people form sensory relationships with materials they work and play with in childhood; it is time to stop normalising the relationship with materials that are harmful to the environment.

Unsure about which materials are safe? Consider this; if we can put it in the compost knowing it will safely decompose to enrich the soil, then it's safe. Watch out for plastics and anything with synthetic fibres; these often breakdown over time and are the source of micro-plastics that pollute our water and soil systems. 

If we are 'recycling' materials by using them in children's craft activities, ask, "What is the next part in the cycle?". Many crafts that 'recycle' plastics and synthetic fibres end up in the bin. The bin is the ‘end of a cycle’ not ‘part of a cycle'. 

If we use food products in our craft, are they used wisely? We see too many children's-crafts using good food that ends up in the bin. 

When choosing materials and tools, we also consider where our resources are coming from (buy local if possible), what kind of packaging products come in, and whether we are using long-lasting and repairable tools. These considerations take us closer toward 'circular economy thinking', where we look at our actions holistically and work sustainability.

Meaningful Purpose
All Crafternoon craft 'makes' are made to be used and have a higher purpose than 'just making something'. 

We noticed that the word 'craft' has two different meanings in our culture, meanings that differ regarding purpose. Craft for adults, is where the creations are used and have purpose, in buildings and homes, items that are treasured, restored and passed down as heirlooms.  Then there is the craft for children, where the purpose is often to fill their time and provide something to take home as a product-for-proof. 

Giving children's craft activity a real-life purpose holds a deep underpinning message. When crafts are worthy of use and valuable enough to keep, it shows value and worthiness in the maker's time, effort, creativity, and hard work. To put it another way, what message of their value and worthiness are we sending, when we give children use-less makes that will later end up in the bin?

To find meaning and purpose in the craft sessions we hold, we look to seasonal celebrations, items for everyday use, and things we can use personally, as a family, or give to loved ones. Children have made festive wreaths for front doors in December, lanterns for Martinmas processions, and multi-use items such as rhubarb string, oak gall ink, and calendula balm. All the 'makes' have a purpose, and all use materials that aid a nature connection and are not harmful to the environment.

Open-Age-Appropriate 
By open-age-appropriate, we mean providing activities that work for both younger and older children and all levels of ability. This open and mixed age-group approach celebrates everyone's unique style, pace, expression and fosters an inclusive atmosphere.

We make room for process-learning and creativity with the materials, time and instruction we provide at sessions. Children can try out new things, come up with something unique, and get into a 'flow-state'. Process-learning and creativity encourage a 'growth mindset' by removing judgemental aspects such as comparisons, assessment and competition. Inclusivity, creativity and growth mindset are all important attributes for future eco-aware citizens.

Providing for all levels of ability means, offering activities that engage early and more experienced hand development, and giving children the opportunity to develop their hand working skills. 

The three-dimensional handwork done in childhood happens to be vital for child development, specifically with the development of cognitive problem-solving skills. To the extent that when NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory looks for a research and development problem solver, they specifically seek applicants who worked with their hands in childhood.  Because we see the value in handwork, we are careful when offering crafters a 'helping hand' so as not to rob children of this important developmental handwork. 

Why not give it a try?  Sustainable craft sessions are fun and exciting, empowering the children and also work for groups of adults too.  By designing activities that tick all three boxes (Nature-Friendly Materials, Meaningful Purpose and Open-Age-Appropriate), we promote values that nurture individuals, communities, and the environment.

Crafternoon sustainable children's craft sessions were initially designed for the Rutland Home Education Group in 2019. We currently run Crafternoons through Root-and-Branch Out CIC, with sessions for both home educated and school children.  [2022]

​This morning we had a fantastic Bush Tucker session in the woods at Rutland Farm Park.  Whilst Jo had a superb helper to get a good fire going, the other children explored their surroundings playing ‘capture the flag.’ This included Louise clearing a tunnel through the undergrowth to find one of the flags, however she was not declared the winner!  

After enjoying a snack of pancakes, everyone worked together to prepare and cook an amazing lunch of homemade burgers.

Although the morning went really quickly we did squeeze in a quick tools session to whittle some sticks and toast marshmallows on the fire before meeting parents.

The sun came out and gave us a beautiful afternoon for our family session! We practised keeping safe around the fire by kneeling in the respect position to toast marshmallows, created habitats and explored the potion resources to make drinks for the adults!

All of the families enjoyed exploring the woodland with the tree swing becoming a firm favourite for most. We practised fishing on the bridge using buckets and ropes and made flags using the Hapa Zome technique.

They came, they saw, they played.  If you went down to the woods today, you’d be sure of a big surprise. Happy families laughing, learning and playing together. Places were explored, trees were swung on, potions were mixed, marshmallows were toasted, trees were climbed, bridges were crossed, buckets were lowered, and creatures were captured (and released).

With Rutland Home Education Children

The three weeks of home-made cooking were fun and informative for all of us involved.
It has proven to be a good thing to cook and eat together to encourage trying new flavours, textures and to generate discussion about where our food comes from, food miles and the impact of that on the planet.

We chose recipes that were seasonal, so we could often buy British sourced vegetables, bought from our local markets and supermarkets, and from the zero-waste stall in Uppingham market.  We also were fortunate to be able to use veggies from our community allotment for two of our dishes!

We talked a lot about hygiene and started each session, looking at the steps that we needed to go through to ensure we were clean and ready to prepare food. We put hair up, took hats off, rolled up sleeves, took off any jewellery, and washed hands.  Children were encouraged to clean up the workspace when necessary to maintain a clean area and to use the correct chopping boards for the appropriate foods. We also saved any raw peelings for our compost and disposed of any rubbish appropriately in refuse bin or recycling bin.

Our meals were ambitious with a group of eight children!

Week One
Week one involved a two-course meal of parsnip soup with a range of Indian spices. Pasta Pomodoro was our second course. Children in the group loved pasta and this was an easy one to please.

The tomato sauce was made from scratch to demonstrate how easy it is to make a sauce, rather than buy a ready-made one. Some had cheese on top of the pasta and we discussed the vegan alternative to cheese and noted that Lesley in Nature’s Dispensary, Mill Street, sells it.

Week Two
Week two was more elaborate; a meal with many elements to it.  We embarked on creating falafels with a base of raw beetroot. This was a wonderful vegetable to work with because of its colour. Our hands, the chopping boards and the falafels turned purple so the opportunities for chatting about colour and dyes was inevitable.

We made a side dish of coleslaw. Two different types were made, one with cheese and apple and mayo and the other a vegan option of carrot and apple and vegan mayonnaise. Both were delicious and though apple might not be in a usual ingredient in coleslaw, it was good to see how fruit could be incorporated into a savoury meal.  We also made flatbread to go with our falafels, which was easy for the children to make.

This week because of all the different types of preparation; grating, mashing, whizzing, chopping, and mixing there was so much washing up. The washing up was not the favourite activity of the course, but again demonstrated all that is involved in cooking. We had conversations about having a dishwasher at home and for some children, they see and participate in washing up less and less.

In this session we invited children to think about what their favourite foods were, and we had a range of answers inevitably. Some food was healthy, and some fast-food.  We also enjoyed working out where the country of origin of those foods and talked about how different foods grow in different climates and how its transported around the world.

Week Three
We decided that week three, we would make burgers; both vegan and meat.  We would also make our bread dough to make the buns needed to put our burgers in.  The two different types of burgers we made were both delicious.  The vegan burgers were enjoyed by a few children in the group and the meat burgers enjoyed by more children.

The children enjoyed making and kneading the bread dough, although the gluten-free option was a totally different texture to the wheat based dough and slightly resembled a paving slab! We talked about adding Xanthan Gum to the Gluten-free mix to enable the dough to become more stretchy.

We recognised that the very act of cooking and eating together creates a sense of community. Working out people’s food needs and likes takes cooperation and respect, a real lesson for all of us.

The evaluations returned by the children were positive and it would seem, that they have been encouraged by their cooking together to take a keen interest in the future.

Thanks for being part of this food community!
Many thanks to The Healthy Rutland Grant for funding this project.

We have met every Wednesday at the Rutland Farm Park at 10am and got ready to walk to the woods for our session in the Community Woods (Victorian Arboretum).  The site has changed over the course of their time here and a new log circle has been made with a fire pit in the centre, a tool area is emerging and being developed on one side of the site and the Willow trees were cut as they had been a hazard with some weak limbs. The logs from the willow now act as a climbing area and are now home to a huge number of fungi, mosses and insects.  There are now two swings, the climbing area, the bridge has been completed during this time too and there is a designated climbing tree, which the children identified and had a good think about its hazards and benefits.

Our time in the woods continues to begin around the fire circle to consider our values as a group and ends in the fire circle to consider what we have learnt, how we have played, what we have enjoyed and what we wish to do the following week.  The group have taken time to build relationships together and we often discussed the children’s feelings in the reflection session or in response to some elements of play that needed clarification among the group.

There were some types of play that needed discussion to sort out the “group rules.”  There was a wish by some children to play rough; jumping on each other, chasing and mild wrestling play. Some of the children were not keen on this type of play. We had many discussions about how to manage some children’s need for this type of play and the other children’s need to stay safe and unhurt . We discussed asking for consent around playing in a rough play way, and also decided that we should only play as rough as the weakest person in the group. This took some working out as it’s not necessarily the smallest person who is the weakest so there was lots of thinking about permission to play in this way and the level of rough play that should be used. Children seemed happy to discuss this and set some ground rules for the small group and it has worked well.

Two more children joined our group this term (Autumn) which again altered the dynamics of the group the children have been working together to accommodate each other in the woodland setting. The new children have brought their skills and warm personalities and added a new dynamic to our group.

The swing on Cyril the Sycamore became a very happy place however there obviously were tensions among the group about taking turns and who had the longest go. We bought an egg timer and we provided children with pen and paper to write a name list so they could take turns.  We talked about what might be a sensible time to have a turn on the swing and they stuck to their plan most of the time. Sometimes though, other things became more interesting, and all of the waiting and organising of the swing timetable was quickly abandoned as something else became the stimulus. A few weeks after the egg timer and name list was introduced the children started to work out for themselves when they would take turns. They also were risk assessing constantly while using the swing. They recognised that there was a branch in the way and so we had to take tools to remove it they also recognise that there were many stinging nettles and although they were afraid of them in one way, they also wanted to fly on the swing as high as they could to swing over the stinging nettles.

The children found a den that they wanted to call their own and there was some frustration about who was ‘allowed’ to use the den. This was another opportunity for discussion about our value of “fair share” and about enabling all people to access all places so that people feel included.  The den still needs some work although it has fallen down the children’s list of priorities right now. We would like to invite them to do some work on this then to make it a manageable place to play and to set up some boundaries within it because of its proximity to the stream.

We have enjoyed lighting fires this term and the children have taken a keen interest in fire lighting and looking at materials that will catch fire quickly when starting a fire. Children have been helping to prepare wood to for the fire and have been able to use a Froe and mallet to chop our ash logs into smaller pieces.

In the autumn and children picked prepared used other ingredients and cooked with us the cordial and then enjoyed the drink over a couple of weeks to warm our tummies in the woods. We are pausing for a half term break now and will return in November for more play and learning in the woods.

The sun shone on a group of about 20 volunteers who came to support the Barrowden wildflower meadow project. Hugh Cripps from Barrowden, with support from Active Rutland’s Grow Together project, has been instrumental in getting this project going on a patch of grassy hill above the village allotments.

Native wildflower seed was scattered over an area of about 300 m², after raking off cut grass and scarifying the ground. It was good physical work that brought people together to build community and networks.

The wildflower meadow will increase colour, beauty and biodiversity in this area of wild space for people to enjoy.

The Grow Together team, Alex and Claire, hope to encourage local artists to visit this wildflower sanctuary and be inspired to draw and paint what grows.  A future botanical art exhibition is planned for early summer next year to celebrate the Grow Together stories around Rutland.

If you would like to get involved in community growing projects through the Grow Together project please get in touch with Claire and Alex from Root-and-Branch Out CIC and they can put you in touch with existing projects or you could develop your own.

“Grow Together” held a community engagement event along with Barleythorpe Allotment Society on the 22nd May 2019, to do some worm charming and a soil survey. It was a lovely May evening and around 30 people came out in summer clothes for an early evening get-together! We sang, played drums, stamped our feet and dug holes to encourage any worms living in the new allotment beds to have a wriggle around! 
 
Around six samples were completed and overall only three worms were found! This is not to say that worms don’t exist here, but as the allotments are a new site with builder’s rubble in the imported topsoil, this is not an ideal habitat for our worm friends.
 
More worms would be of real benefit for this growing space for food and flowers and would greatly improve the quality of the soil. Worms help to improve drainage and aerate the soil so that plants grow better allowing them to root more efficiently to draw up the water and nutrients that they need to grow. 
 
It was evident that work needs to be done to enrich the soil on this new allotment site. No doubt this will be done as the older allotment site at Barleythorpe has a productive and thriving soil, growing food and worms in abundance!
 
We shall host the worm survey again next May after a year of growing and adding nutrition to the soil and hope that the worm population increases!
 
Thank you to Cllr Sue Webb for working on this project with Grow Together and to all for coming to the event and for thinking about maintaining good growing conditions for food for families for now and in the future.