Gdes2014 Lakeside Visit & Mobiles and Origami Workshop

We undertook various this week - including a crucial visit to the new UW Lakeside site where we were given a short refresher talk by the facility's manager Rob Delahay and a walk/talk around the key areas of the site. With reference to the "Children's Bushcraft" brief we looked at both the wooded strip of land at the far end of the site where activities are due to take place - as well as the various lakes and wildlife on site. In addition to this we also had a go at creating mobiles and origami shapes - taking 2D paper elements and moving them into 3D - this being part of the assessed brief this year and the eActivity book planned.

Additional ref this week: Project Wild Thing (2013)
A recent film that seeks to examine why we as a society are becoming more and more distanced from the outdoors. Although not entirely the reason for it, the film also makes the point that our children's generation today are the first generation to have a LOWER life expectancy than the previous generation (this also links to childhood obesity, inactivity, diet, sugar, etc, etc).



UW Lakeside pictures:

Rob's quick refresher talk with Q+A.

The strip of woods in which there'll eventually be clearings, campfire sites and
spaces for shelters and tents etc for the anticipated Children's
Bushcraft activities..

Getting an idea of the scale of the site by walking it's periphery. There will
ultimately be various other pitches and running tracks laid out here too.

Some of this week's group of visiting students from the Gdes2010
Graphic Information Design and Gdes2014
Children's Book Design modules.

A pair of Mallards - just some of the various types of wildlife
on and around the site's lakes area.

Students walk through the site's lakes area.

Examples of work and outputs from this week's mobiles and origami workshop:

Students examining their peers' rough work and research to date this week.

Students busy creating mobiles from test sheets.

Suspended natural world mobile. Students could make one of these
as part of this semester's brief and maybe add 'found'
materials as part of a game for children on site.

After about an hour's experimenting these are some of the examples
of ideas coming through from the workshop.

Gdes2014 Early Research, London Bookfair Sign Up & Grids Refresher

We had some good discussions this week around early research done for the 'live' brief linked to children's bushcraft activities at the new UW Lakeside site. In addition, I showed 3 short videos that talked about 'Forest Schools' from the perspective of: the children's Activities, the BBC linking this to academic learning abilities and improvements in concentration and Anna S also found an excellent overview video from Richard Louv - as mentioned in the brief's introduction.

Introduction to 'Forest Schools' (rem this is a brand name for a company that supplies these courses):

 

 Surrey Council's Forest Schools Initiative.

BBC News snippet talking about the importance of children's outdoor learning:

Richard Louv Video


The London Bookfair 2016

 

All students who attended today's session signed-up for their free entry to the 2016 London Bookfair for when we go to London on Apr 13th. the process covers a couple of pages of web forms but once you've completed all required fields (starred 'red' on the form) you should end up at the checkout with '£0.00'.. You will need this to get in to the Bookfair - it's £50 each if you forget to do this and try to get in on the day.

To book your ticket go to the website and follow the step by step instructions under 'buy your ticket'. Keep saying that you're a student and in education and if you've done it correctly then (as with those in session) it should be free at the end of the process. If not then you'll need to go back through the process and check each point to be sure again.



http://www.londonbookfair.co.uk/