Comic Monsters and Book Making – School Holiday Workshops

Yesterday marked the final school holiday workshop for the year here at Heritage Hill. But never fear, we’ll be back next year with loads more interesting, artistic, write-tastic and engaging workshops for 5-12 year olds. If you’re interested in knowing more, contact us to join the mailing list either by phoning us on 9793 4511 or emailing us at heritagehill@cgd.vic.gov.au. But onto the photos for the last few workshops…

Make Your Own Comic Monster
This popular workshop, run by artist Sarah Catherine Firth, taught the participating young artists how to create monsters from their own imaginations. We had all sorts of monsters produced, from friendly to scarey, big, small and everything inbetween. Check out these great photos from the day!

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Toy Rescue – School Holiday Workshops

Yesterday we had our final garden-themed school holiday workshop for the year, Toy Rescue. This is one you can do at home too. Do you have a broken Barbie trailer lying around? How about a rusty toy truck that you’re not sure what to do with? And what on earth do you do with a single shoe that’s lost its pair? Yesterday’s great gardening workshop showed the participants how to recycle any amount of old toys and other interesting containers into little gardens.

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Make your own compost and No Dig Gardens – School Holiday Workshops

How amazing is this spring weather! Are you out and about in it too? We just want to drag our computers out of the office and live in the garden all week. We can’t, but luckily our school holiday workshops are letting local kids loose in our gardens…

Yesterday we had a Make Your Own Compost workshop, teaching kids (and their parents!) all about compost and how easy it is to make and use. We had a tour of the garden first, spotting some rare and interesting plants that all benefit from our use of compost, then onto the getting-your-hands-dirty bit, which some kids thought was the best bit of all!

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Artists in residence in schools – Barking Spider and Dandenong West Primary School part two

This year, Barking Spider Visual Theatre (one of our regular school holiday workshop presenters) has an Extended School Residency through Arts Victoria, at none other than our very own Dandenong West Primary School. We’ve just had an update from BSVT with some great pictures to share!

Well, the title is official: “The Next Big Thing: We made it ourselves!”It’s all systems go at Dany West Primary. The shadow puppetry is gathering momentum, the sound creation is shaking up a storm (evoking one, literally), and the bunraku style puppetry is really taking shape as the kids are truly embracing the art form, and all the collaboration that the project demands.

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Mosaic Workshop – School Holiday Workshop

Oh, it happened so quickly! The school holiday program is over for another term! Today was our last workshop for the term 2 holidays, a Mosaic Workshop. Our participants had a quick introduction of mosaics and then it was onto the making.

Within the many bits of smashed tiles, plates and assorted crockery, artists young and old placed colours in patterns or shapes until they were satisfied. It’s a more time consuming process than you might think.

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Digital Animation Workshop – School Holiday Workshop

Today we had an awesome workshop teaching 8-12 year olds how to make a digital animation. First, we wathced a couple of digital animations done by other people (including the SPLASH animation from Artplay we featured on the blog a while ago) and then armed with a camera each, our participants worked together to create a little hand drawn animation and then moved onto 3d animation with plasticine, sequins and pom poms.
Everyone left with some great animations and there were several plans hatched to make more at home!

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Recycled Art – School Holiday Workshop

How fast does time fly? We’re into the second week of the holidays already! Yesterday we had a fun and crafty hands on workshop making art from recycled materials. Here are a few photos of the process and the some of the finished items!

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Happy Birthday Peter Rabbit at The Drum Theatre

Looking for more things to do with your kids over these school holidays? Check out The Drum Theatre’s show next Tuesday –

Happy Birthday Peter Rabbit
Based on the books by Beatrix Potter
Tuesday 10 July, 10.30am & 1pm
Tickets – All: $15, Family: $50

Celebrate the 110th Anniversary of Beatrix Potter’s beloved classic with Happy Birthday Peter Rabbit, a mischievous musical about the world’s most loveable bunny. Bring your toy bunny along to play in our garden foyer. Join in other activities before and after the show.

Bookings through the Drum Theatre Box office on 9771 6666 or purchase them online here.

Duration: 55 minutes (no interval). Suitable: 3 – 8 years.

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Campfire Yarns – School Holiday Workshop

Today is our last indigenous workshop in celebration of NAIDOC week – for this year at least! We had the Wurundjeri mob back again, this time sharing stories around the fire in Campfire Yarns.

We were so caught up in the stories being shared, not just from the facilitators but by the kids too, that we didnt get much time for photos. But here is a hand carved Lyrebird, watching over the preceedings:

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Bush Tucker – School Holiday Workshop

Today our school holiday workshops continue with a Bush Tucker workshop from the Wurundjeri Land Council. We had a presentation on Aboriginal history, culture and food and we finished up with our participants being led in a dance retelling a creation myth on the front lawn of Laurel Lodge. What a deadly day!

A participant and some of the items bought in for show

A possum skin cloak with the story of the owner imprinted on the skin

Bill instructs a kangaroo on what to do

The eagle, Bunjil, soars past a hunter

The hunters capture a kangaroo

Inspired by the final dance, a young girl takes off around the fig tree

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