Huddersfield

I've been wanting to blog for some time, but the longer I leave it the harder it becomes. Things keep happening and I just dont know how I'm ever going to catch up. So I'm not going to try, (but I have put a few things on my HE journal blog- why did I start so many blogs, I don't have time for just one!). I've ben so busy lately. It seems that now I'm doing proper full time HE my life is so totally hectic and taken over I dont have the time for much else. And my computer time has been spent on Ebay: I've done a bit of decluttering, although you wouldn't know it if you saw inside my house!
And I've been busy starting our new HE group in Hebden, which has been going well. A lot of the children are quite young and seem to do a lot of charging around, which can get a bit wearing after 3 hours, but I did mange to improve things a bit this week, by having some building bricks, etc to play with and arranging rugs, toys and furniture stratigically around the room, in such a way as to mimimise charging around space. And opening the door into the garden! We did some wet on wet painting, which was great and created a few minute's peace as well! I have left some drawing stuff there, which can be got out every week. Last week we did corn dollies and conker webs and this week there was leaf rubbing, leaf printing (with hammers, oops, a bit noisy!), and clay, incorporating natuaral materials eg, pine cones and beech nuts to make pixies with hats (limited uptake on the pixies! but you wont stop me trying!). I have rooted out some largish weaving frames and miles of binding tape in the garage, I have some smaller weaving frames somewhere...? and oodles of wool. (Hopefully this should declutter my home some more!).
As you may have gathered, there is quite a strong creative bias to this group, although is was my aim to get together families who were HEing within a 2 mile radius and had never met! Well, I hope this goes alright for everybody else, but it's what I enjoy doing best and what I'm skilled in so why not. Plus its in an Arts Centre, so it should fit it there. Maybe I should call it an art and craft group and attract people from further away. I'm all for children developing their creativity- it's such a vital part of life and there's plenty to be learned through making stuff, etc. Plus it's fun, well I think so. I'm quite excited by it all, really. There is also a room with computers with broadband access and a very old friend of mine on hand to show people the ropes. (am I plugging this or what?). I need to find out some more ideas for group activities (come on, you can do it, there is a community artist in you somewhere!). Planning a visit to the Scrapstore in Halifax to get some free materials.
(I'm not getting a minute's peace here- since I started writing, Brendan phoned up to say his car had broken down in Huddersfield, the cat started pestering me for no apparent reason and somebody has been wandering around upstairs)
Where was I? Today we went to a group in Huddersfield with the theme of Egyptians. I thought I knew nothing about this until I remembered I actually went to Egypt many years ago, so I got out my old photo's and showed the kids yesterday. (They struggled with the concept of photo's that weren't stored on the computer so I had to explain how we used to do it!). I don't think they quite knew what to make of the crocodile embalming/mummifying activity, which was very impressive. But Jem liked the belly dancing and the great story-telling.
Last week we went skating and Jem wants to go every week now! Not sure how this will work with the others unless I leave her and take them to the National Museum of Photography, round the corner, and which they really liked. We didn't get that far in the hour left I had in the car park: The animation bit where they have some original Wombles and the Smash ad robots (had to get another oblique reference to Huddersfield in there!)