By Kate Hodges
28th July 2021
DO: FOSSIL FOOLS
Are you headed to the beach this summer? The weather is a little unpredictable at the moment, so it’s useful to have a few activities up your sleeve for rainy days. Fossilling is always fun and even the youngest hunter might find something extraordinary (the most impressive dinosaur footprint found in a decade was discovered by a four-year-old girl in Wales)
Learn the basics here, and read about the ethics of finding preserved creatures and plants here. If you’d like to learn from the experts, Lyme Regis Museum runs fossil-hunting walks; book yours here
RECIPE: CUT AND DRIED
It’s National Preserving Awareness Week! Why not try the ultimate planet-friendly cuisine – snacks cooked by solar power? Try making healthy sun-dried fruit, chillis, sun-dried tomatoes or steep sun tea slowly over a warm day (we like black tea and lemon, but peppermint also works well). For a bigger kids project, why not bake biscuits using a simple, home-made solar oven, or, if you have more time, build this ‘proper’ version for your garden
MAKE AND LEARN: BURNING BRIGHT
Thursday is International Tiger Day, celebrating on of the planet’s most striking, awe-inspiring animals (learn more about them here and find a tigers toolkit here). Rather depressingly, numbers of the magnificent beasts have dropped by more than 95 per cent since the beginning of the 20th century. Show your support for the creature by crafting a tiger mask or ordering a sew-on badge.
EVENT: RULE BREAKERS
Gateshead’s Play On The Square is a summer-long, drop-in programme of cheeky games, workshops and activities all designed by BALTIC Young Programmers aged 13–15. It asks us to playfully explore our own lockdown journeys, negotiate conflicting information and consider to what extent we should follow the rules and which we might break along the way. There’s lots of family-friendly fun going on at the gallery this summer, including Thursday Meet and Make sessions, an Art In Action Trail which runs from the gallery to Dunston Staiths and the venue’s excellent, free sensory room.
EVENT: TREASURE HOUSE
The Sir John Soane Musuem is one of the quirkiest spaces in London; a 19th century townhouse crammed with an eclectic collection of treasures from around the world. And when we say crammed, we mean it; the paintings, sculptures, furniture and antiquities are stacked floor-to-ceiling. It’s free to enter although you’ll need to book tickets in advance. If you’d like to have a peek at the extraordinary home online, book tickets for a virtual family tour and craft workshop tomorrow (Thursday) or explore the rooms via the Bloomberg Connects app.
WHAT WE’RE READING: The Rise of the 3-Parent Family “The typical path to parenthood didn’t work for David Jay, a founder of the asexual movement. So he designed his own household — and is trying to show others what is possible.” Read more here
How Everybody Can Thrive by Five: Seven-year-old Molly Wright is one of the youngest-ever TED speakers. Her talk about the benefits of play is captivating, although she is *almost* upstaged by her one-year-old brother, Ari. Watch here
