We went through the car wash earlier. Rookie error as the un-tarmacced (That’s not a word, but you know what I mean) road wound on before us!

We drove through an eerie cloud of white dust where the sun beams shone down in diagonal lines through the trees! It was mystical!

G6 was peering through the forest looking for fairies. She thought she saw a tooth mouse (they don’t have tooth fairies in some countries in the world, it must be too much work for one species!)

More to books…

The tooth mouse by Susan Hood and Janet Nuova (Photo credit- amazon.com)

The uneven road made the car wobble and G3 said we must be driving over DRAGON FOOTPRINTS!

More to books…

Herb the Vegetarian Dragon by Jules Bass and Debbie Harter (Photo credit by Amazon.co.uk)

(I used to love reading this book at a Nursery I worked in, the potential for children to learn it’s ok to be different but also, eating more vegetables is healthy and eating less meat is good for the environment)

I can’t describe truely how magical it was, you would have to have been there, not even a photograph could have done it justice.

But at the end of the 5km track was even more magic!

http://www.devamanfredo-stoneart.com

Since 1982, Deva Manfredo has been collecting stones and literally anything that he finds in nature: forests and beaches. He does not alter them at all, and he sculpts with them without any glue or cement! He just uses gravity and balancing/equilibrium. There are over 120 sculptures. What I loved most about this place was how it opened the children’s eyes and heart to thinking differently. How they learnt that you can while away the hours without plastic toys or electronics.

So this blog will share books based on some of the sculptures we saw, and share ideas of how your children can make sculptures too!

There’s a baby! This reminded me of Avocado Baby! Great book!

More to books…

Avocado Baby by John (Photo credit: Amazon.com)

This sculpture reminds me of a scarecrow!

The Scarecrows wedding by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler (Photo credit: Amazon.co.uk)

PIRATES. What’s a pirates favourite letter?

More to books…

Pirate Pete (and Princess Polly) have a range of books for lots of subjects. We used this to help potty train G2!

Pirate Pete- Potty by Andrea Pennington (Photo credit- amazon.com)

To support your children to get creative, take them to the forest or park, by a river or on the beach and collect things there and then.

Let them use their imagination as to what it reminds them of, how would they like to build them? Sculptures can be made flat so there is less risk that things will fall on them if they are young but this is a great opportunity for engineering and science.

Do you remember art attack? Where Neil Buchannan would make pictures out of random stuff and then the camera pulled away it looked like something! I used to try and dot hat with my clothes. I’m pretty sure my mum hated that when they all ended up crumpled!

Check this out: what Is Neil making in this Big Art Attack?

https://youtu.be/MzcZVXWRmZE