We three kings…

Wandering around the garden today, we came upon a trail of glitter leading into the sun porch.

 

Intrigued, we followed it, and found a single hand crafted crown…

 

From there, we found two more…

 

We had a children’s party on the weekend which had a jumping castle, food, entertainment and a craft table. We’re assuming that these were carefully made by someone who left them in a quiet corner to dry and forgot to come back for them.

Not wanting all that hard work to go to waste, they’re now displayed in pride of place amongst our Christmas decorations in the office.

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Children’s workshop – Celebration Decoration and Gift Making

On the weekend we had our last children’s workshop for the year, the Celebration Decoration and Gift Making Workshop.
We made some great Christmas trees, some very happy looking decorations and even a wreath or two.

We’ll be annoucing our school holiday program for 2012 very soon, so keep an eye out, there’s loads of really interesting workshops coming up next year!

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Children’s workshop – Sand Painting

In conjunction with our Mandala exhibition currently on at Heritage Hill, we are running a number of workshops and talks. The first one was on Saturday and it was a children’s art workshop creating Indian Sand Paintings.

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uncovering garden secrets

I don’t know a lot about decorative plants. Vegie patches is an area I’ve dabbled in, edible plants I understand and do ok at growing, but decorative plants didn’t really used to interest me, until now.

Heritage Hill is surrounded by almost 2 acres (Or just over 2 acres, depending on who is telling you) of beautiful gardens that have been kept in the 1930′s style that Mrs. Hart planted. This means that they’re divided up into little square sections, which call to mind the Art Deco style of straight patterning. We have 1 full time gardener and a number of part time gardeners who work hard to keep the gardens beautiful, all year around.

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School Holiday workshop – Character archaeology

Today we had back Penelope Bartlau from Barking Spider Visual Theatre to do another workshop with us, this time a drama one called Character archeology. Sound intriguing? Read on:

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School Holiday workshop – All Hands on the Puppet

Today the wonderful Penelope Bartlau from Barking Spider Visual Theatre came out to do a workshop with us called All Hands on the Puppet. She told us about the Japanese art of Bunraku where the puppets are the size of a 5 year old child and they take three puppeteers to move. With Pene’s help, we made our own Bunraku style puppets out of newspaper.

It’s amazing how much you can create with just newspaper and masking tape!

All Hands on the Puppet is designed for families to co-operate with the designing, making and puppeteering. There needs to be lots of talking and negotiation in the design process.

Some people made big puppets…

And some people made little ones.

Then Pene (with a little help from our Public Programs officer, Sayra) showed us how to puppeteer our brand new puppets. Pene moved it’s head and arms while Sayra concentraited on it’s legs. It moved like it was alive!

We practised our puppeteering and then…

We put on a show! We each did a little scene between two puppets.

This puppet is saying “Goodbye!”

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School Holiday workshop – Fabric Dolls

It’s a cold and rainy day here in Dandenong today, but that only seems to make the creative grow (or is that flow?)

Today we were sewing fabric dolls and there were some beautiful dolls created!

 
First, you need to cut out your dolls. Arms, legs, clothing, hair all needs to be considered and created.

 

Then you need to sew your doll together. Some people had sewn before, some only learned today. But everyone agreed that it was actually pretty simple when you get down to it.

 

Some people worked together with mums and grandmas to create their dolls.

 

This was the final result. Beautiful dolls, some with flowing hair and elegant dresses, some with short hair and day clothing, all colours of the rainbow. All the dolls looked really happy, and so did all the participants!

 

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School Holiday workshop – Green Thumbs and Gumboots

What a busy day! Today we had our Green Thumbs and Gumboots workshop, and it just proves how much you can fit into an hour an a half. Have a look at all the things we did.

First, we took a tour around the gardens with Steve, Heritage Hill’s head gardener. He showed us loads of plants including one so rare he’s never seen it before. The plants come from all around the world, from ever single contenent. Steve can even tell you which plants come from which countries… He’s got a really good memory for plants, which is a good idea if you want to be a gardener!

 

Then we had a treasure hunt. Steve handed out photos of plants and we had to run around and find them. Some of them were easy to spot, but some were really hard…

 

Then Samantha took over. She’s an expert on composting so she explained how to make good compost in your garden. 

 

 Steve piled some of Heritage Hill’s compost onto the ground so we could see how healthy it is. We found lots of worms in the compost, which means that it’s going really well.

Finally, we all did some planting into little pots, which we got to take home at the end of the workshop. I hope they have big beautiful flowers like some of the plants we saw today. My favourite flowers in the garden at the moment are thin and red. If you come to visit, see if you can find them for yourself…

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School Holiday workshop – Worry Dolls

The September school holidays got off to a flying (and colourful) start today with our Worry Dolls workshop.

The Worry Dolls tradition comes from Guatemala where children whisper their worries at night to small, colourful dolls. They then place these dolls under their pillows, believing that the dolls will hold the worries for the children, so the children can get a good night’s sleep.

These little dolls have a big important job to do!

So today, participants in the Worry Doll workshop made their own Worry Dolls to share their worries with. Check out some of the dolls created!

This Worry Doll was one of the first ones finished. It blends in nicely with it’s maker’s dress. Lots of kids made the Worry Dolls in colours they were wearing.

 

Yarn was flying about all over the place. Everyone made super colourful Worry Dolls. There was a Richmond supporter Worry Doll, several disco Worry Dolls and a superhero Worry Doll or two.

 

Everyone made at least 2 dolls each. A few made up to 4!

 

If you look carefully, you’ll see in this picture 2 Worrd Dolls and one Worry Mermaid.

In the end there were over 45 Worry Dolls created to take home. Phew! That’s a weight off our mind…

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