Ringsfield Hall Wed 6th, 13th and 20th March 2013

For the next three weeks at this particular site I got a break from digging, and instead turned my hand to a little acting...

Ringsfield Ecocentre runs a particular course called Earthwatch, which focusses on the air, soil and water cycles. My role was to become Mother Nature for a day, and make soil with the children. Having dabbled in amature dramatics and realised the full potential of my abilities (think babyface in Bugsy Malone, an alien in a play the name of which escapes me and, my most critical performance; a tree for 3 hours of Much Ado About Nothing), I was ever so slightly nervous.

Mother Nature's Kitchen; move over Delia.  

Brushing the stage fright aside, I donned various layers of floaty hankerchiefs, scarfs and a greengrocer's tabbard, rubbed leaves and twigs in my hair, and before you could say break a leg, a character was born.  

Key tools for soil-making

Before arriving at Mother Nature's kitchen, the children had collected various things from the woods in order to help make soil. After a welcome, and a slight rant about what she had been up to all morning, Mother Nature (with a decidedly dodgey Newcastle accent) worked with the children to bash, smash, break and wallop their pinecones, twigs, leaves and stones into tiny pieces. 

After breaking up the ingredients, the children  compared their soil with the 'soil sinks'; a collection of boxes with the various levels of soil in, to see what stage had been achieved.

Soil sinks: ground level soil (far left), top soil (left), subsoil (right) and parent material (far right).

 This ran for three weeks, and each time was a huge amount of fun with a lot of learning alongside it.