This summer the Education and Community Team have been let loose in RobinHill every Friday, leading the Really Wild Friday events at Robin Hill. Robin Hill is a very poular tourist attraction set in 88 acres of beautiful Island woodland, and we laid on a host of fun and free activities throughout the day. The most popular activity was a Wilderness Survival session at the gipsy camp in the woods for all budding Ray Mears. We provided tarpaulins and string for family groups to create their own bivouacs using the natural materials found in the woods. Families
threw themselves into this activity with gusto, and over the summer we saw some brilliant and innovative structures being created. After finishing their shelters Danny held a fire lighting workshop, demonstrating different ways of lighting fire without using matches. Each family group was then given a fire lighting kit to try and get their own fire going. Groups with successful fires were rewarded with a round of marshmallows to toast.
We also ran "hands-on with nature" arts and crafts down at the Really Wild Stage, making magic woodland wands, dream catchers and paper kites, using a mixture of natural, recycled and scrap store materials.
Sat 12th July saw the launch of the first 'Children's Guide to the Isle of Wight'. It was held at Quay Arts in Newport and was endorsed by a Royal visit from Queen Victoria no less.
The Children's Guide is a candid and colourful book written, illustrated and edited solely by Island Children and reflects their views about the places they like the most, the places they like to eat and the things that they most like doing on the Island.
For any visiting family the guide gives a real insiders viewabout what makes the Island special and what you might like to do on your visit.
There were two activities on offer, you could make a badge showing your favourite place on the Island and then pin it to our giant Island map. Book designer Jonathan Ward also ran a book making workshop so that you could make your own personal guide book. Our very own Master Chef , Charlotte Ager, made us a beautiful cake to celebrate with too.
Dame Ellen MacArthur sent the team a message of support, "Hello Everyone, I just wanted to say that I'm really, really sorry that I haven't been able to come along to cut the cake today and congratulate you on your great Guide. I love all the colourful drawings! I really enjoyed reading it and there were a lot of things I didn't know before so I learnt a lot and I am looking forward to using it to discover new places on the island. Aren't we lucky to live on such a great island! Hope to see you all soon, Ellen"
The guide costs £5 and can be brought from Island outlets or directly from Island 2000 with free P&P, follow this link to buy your copy and take a peek at some of the pages: Children's Guide Any profits from sales of the guide will be reinvested into future projects and publications for Children on the Island.
The future's bright, the future's orange with hedgelaying gear. The 2008 Isle of Wight Hedgelaying Competition brightened a drizzling grey day on the last Saturday of February (the traditional day, if 17 years is long enough for a tradition).
Every year there are more people muffled in their cosiest scarves and gloves to watch the brave people who work all day on their stretch of hedge, whatever the weather. National champions, Island champions - and maybe the champions of the future, students from the Isle of Wight College, whose team names are as punning as any pub quiz team.
Island 2000 was there in many guises and disguises.
Paul Sivell, now moved on to higher things, was one of the three judges.
Sam Buck was there with the Gift to Nature display.
And Rowan Adams was trying to load down the visitors with booklets on all aspects of land care, and promoting hedges for all the good things they do.
But of course the real point of the day was Debbie and Joy's delicious rolls and lemon drizzle cake...
Take a look at this clip. It was filmed on Sean's camera and shows a stunning cloud of Starlings wheeling about over Newport before dropping out of the sky and into the conifers around the College to roost for the night. The UK's Biodiversity Action Plan was recently updated. It makes changes to those species and habitats defined as priority species or habitats. Some of the new entries are pretty shocking: Hedgehog, Toad, Eel and the dear old Starling. It's sad to think that a bird once so fantastically common it was almost a pest is now considered a national target for conservation effort.
My overdue attempts to make a listening post for the Troll Trail led me to try something new today - blacksmithing. That's a bit of a grand word for it; all I needed to do was to open out the jagged end of a scaffolding pipe a bit, but it was still a rewarding feeling when the metal squashed out into something more ear-friendly.
My Dad's wood-burning stove, made from an old Calor Gas bottle, was perfect for heating up the metal until it was red-hot. Then I hit it with the round end of a ball pein hammer while my dad held the glowing pipe and tried to avoid the sparks.
East Cowes Primary students braved the cold January weather to make their contribution to the East Cowes Alphabet on Castle Street under the artistic guidance of artists Nathan Holt and Aaron Fletcher. Reception and Year 1 children got stuck in with paint, sponges and stencils to add to the Alphabet. A is for Apple, H is for Helicopter, S is for Spectacles, Sunglasses and Shades and Z, well Z is for Zombies of course.
The alphabet is part of the 'No Barriers' project for East Cowes supported by SEEDA. Look out for more additions to the alphabet and more art on the hoardings in the coming months.
Here you can see the progress of The Purple Kite from scraps of plywood pulled out of a skip, to the proud craft bobbing down the river below.
Like many projects, it's the result of a random turn in a conversation. Simon was talking about beavers and streams, then someone said it would be great if we had an inflatable canoe for surveying wildlife in ponds and rivers. After that someone came up with a challenge: to make our own boat in one day using only recycled materials and anything we could find in the office and then row it across the River Medina and back.
We set to work in our small inventions workshop in East Cowes which SEEDA let us use specifically for making interesting and unlikely creations.
Well, we failed to make it in a day and cheated by buying a box of screws, but as it took shape over the next week our confidence grew that it really would stay afloat with us in it. It started to feel more and more like a proper boat.
The more organic lines can be explained by the fact that there weren't any plans and there wasn't a lot of measuring either.
This picture shows Simon ceremonially rubbing down the boat in whiskey prior to painting.
There are two port-holes in the bottom for observing fish, rocks, seaweed and submarines passing beneath us.
At this point the boat had no name, but by means of a democratic process, we arrived at The Purple Kite. The Island 2000 logo is of course a purple kite and it is also, by sheer coincidence, the rarest species of sea-bird to be found in the British Isles, never having been observed or recorded.
Launchday - a last minute attack of responsibility makes us leave behind our recycled life-jacketsand ask Offshore Challenges next door if they can lend us something more reliable. They hand us two very swanky-looking flotation devices which, we understand, deploy automatically as soon as they get a whiff of sea-water. Simon instructs us that if it looks like we're going down, we're to throw them back onto the land to avoid the punitive cost of recharging the gas canisters. Luckily, this isn't necessary as itturns out to be the driest rowing boat we've been in. We launch from the slipway just next to the car ferry, waved off in a cloud of sherbet by well-wishers and curious staff from Red Funnel. The oars are on the long side for such a small boat, but The Purple Kite is easy to row and very manoeuvrable, sitting surprisingly high in the water. If you'd like to see the cross-Medina escapade for yourself, take a look at the Youtube video below.
We're now planning to produce some commentaries on the wildlife of the Isle of Wight's rivers, viewed and recorded from the water. The Purple Kite is availablefor other water-borne tasks or challenges. Any suggestions?
This summer the Education and Community Team have been let loose in RobinHill every Friday, leading the Really Wild Friday events at Robin Hill. Robin Hill is a very poular tourist attraction set in 88 acres of beautiful Island woodland, and we laid on a host of fun and free activities throughout the day. The most popular activity was a Wilderness Survival session at the gipsy camp in the woods for all budding Ray Mears. We provided tarpaulins and string for family groups to create their own bivouacs using 
the natural materials found in t
he woods. Families
