Learning

With a few basic kitchen ingredients you can make great finger paints for your children that don't contain any dubious substances. Then, with a little foraging and creativity, you can colour them with wild flowers and leaves to create a truly natural painting experience.

With rules and regulations, campsites can be strict. There are some that allow camping fires, but these are few and far between and often get booked up during the busy summer months. One simple and fun way to enjoy camping on your own terms is to start in your very own garden! Kids will love the novelty of a camping night, and it is a lovely opportunity to have some ‘connected’ time together as a family without the distractions of television or video games. Here are some ideas to make your garden camping night one to remember...

In the next edition of The Green Parent magazine we bring you the best selection of summer festivals for you and your family according to your passions. If you’re into dancing, we recommend Sacred Arts Camp and the Gaiatribe Creativity Camp. Like music? Check out Wychwood and Boomtown. For outdoor activities, we love The Wilderness Gathering. Find the best event for you and your family according to what you love

There’s nothing like a lovely bit of stationery to revive the desire to put pen to paper. Deliciously crisp writing paper, a good pen, lovely art supplies and a journal may seem like an archaic pleasure in our computer-driven times, but there’s something about the tangibility of these things that makes them special.

Increased violence by young males is spinning out of control. Boys are constantly bombarded with the false information that real boys must always be strong, aggressive, tough, in control, and repress their feelings says Ted Zeff. Boys are continually saturated with this distorted version of manhood from television and movies, video games, the Internet, peers, coaches, and other adults. In the last 15 years the violent video games and movies children have been exposed to have become more graphic than ever. Here is a 10 step plan to help combat the culture of violence and raise a compassionate son.

As every home educator knows, children learn best when they’re having fun. Most parents, whether they home educate or not, soon become aware of this fact through watching a child’s face light up in recognition when a dull text book fact comes to life through play. It could, and has, been argued that real learning doesn’t take place in an artificial classroom environment, but through a child’s engagement with the world around them. The joy of sharing that learning with our children is unbounded, and a lot of the time we are re-learning forgotten things or discovering concepts anew.

May is Local and Community History Month, an annual awareness month founded by The Historical Association. The aim is get people involved in their local history and participate in events taking place across the UK. Local history is often overlooked in favour of famous people and international events in history, but it is the experiences of ordinary locals that really bring history to life. What kind of food did people eat? What were schools like? What did people do for work? These are the kinds of questions kids can really engage with through discovering local and community history.

Easter always makes me think of crepe paper daffodils decorating the Easter bonnet I entered in to our school’s annual bonnet competition. How proud I was of those little yellow flowers! With nature bursting into life all around us at this time of year, there’s plenty to inspire craft activities and lots of materials to be gathered. Spring is naturally a time of creation too, when the Earth’s fertility translates as a general quest to make and create at home. Here are some fun Easter crafts to get stuck in to during the holidays, sure to keep you and your kids happily ensconced with paper, scissors and glue for hours…

Many women find that becoming a mother is a catalyst for their creativity. Growing, birthing and nurturing a baby often connects women to a deeper sense of their creative power; the challenge is finding time to honour it. Many women report feelings of heightened intuition as they enter this phase of their lives, and experience a depth of emotion new to them. Writing is a great way to release pent up emotion or frustration that might come with the territory of parenting.

I’m sitting typing this in the warm peace of our local library. It’s a place that has a special place in my heart, as all libraries do. Every time I enter a library I still feel the thrill of the fact these amazing places are gloriously, deliciously free. That these great bastions of learning are available to all, regardless of age, economic background or religious leaning. Libraries have something for everyone.