Playing catch up: 09/09/2014, 23/09/2014

Life is hectic at the moment offering me little time on the computer so here is a quick round up of what we have been doing over the last couple of weeks.

09/09/2014 Thread painting and flat breads

Marble and thread painting

This activity was organised by a young lady working towards her Arts Award. There were two techniques to try:

• The first was marble rolling. This is where a paint coated marble was placed into a tray that contained a blank piece of paper. The tray was gently moved to allow the marble to draw random patterns. The marble could be dunked into other colours to add additional layers. This can be a fun toddler activity too if you have a large tin/storage container with a lid.

• The second technique was thread painting, something I've not done since primary school and really enjoyed. This can make some dainty, feathery, colourful images. Paint a piece of string with as many colours as you wish then curl it onto a blank piece of paper with both ends of the string sticking out of the same side. Fold the paper in half and place a book on it. Firmly pull the threads of the string until it is free then discard. Carefully open up the paper to see your finished, mirror image painting. For the more heavy handed people (like me) you could just dip the string straight into the pot of paint but whilst this is quicker you are likely to lose the light feathery effect. 

Flat breads

We do like our cooking but it was kept very simple this week with flat breads. Our guys get hungry so these were demolished very swiftly! A simple recipe can be found on BBC Food.  

23/09/2014 Bread and Butter

Last years wheatsheaf - no camera this year!

It's definitely harvest season so we followed the theme by making our own bread rolls and a wheatsheaf. Most cooking we do from scratch but this week the dough had been prepared in advance to give it time to prove and cook for our lunch.

Image from DIYnatural.com

To join the bread we also made our own butter. We half filled a jam jar with double cream, some of us added a marble, and then we got shaking. The 'naked scientists' have a simple explanation behind the science of butter making here. We were also wanting to see whether adding a marble makes the process any quicker... based on our results it would appear to help however it could simply be that the people using marbles simple shook their jars more quickly. One result was clear, the butter was tasty with our freshly baked bread.