This new section will introduce you to the artists and creatives we love, and I’m so excited to be sharing the beautiful, daring creative practice of my beautiful, daring friend Traysi this newsletter. The first neighbour I got to know when I moved to Watford, Traysi became a friend at a time when I felt especially vulnerable and the way she respects and responds to vulnerability is truly inspirational as you can read in her latest blog post, which also includes her brilliantly relatable poem Lockdown Ting. 

It was great to get feedback that Abiy’s thoughts on continuing to create in spite of doubts were helpful in our last edition, so I know Traysi’s reflections and her example will encourage us as we continue this journey. Recently I’ve been most encouraged to keep going and growing by Bearing Fruit and most painfully challenged by Go Back to Your Country. Pushing herself from written poetry, to audio poetry, to visual poetry, Traysi shares deeply of herself through her work, encouraging us to do the same...

Most kids LOVE hiding! Whether it’s themselves or essential day to day items that you need to be able to find quickly, often keys, there’s lots of fun to be had. 
 

Hide and Seek. The classic. At its most basic one person closes their eyes and counts to ten while others hide, then hunts around for everyone with the last person to be found being the winner (if you want to have one!). Firstly, there’s something about grown ups doing unexpected things which can really delight kids so getting fully involved and finding comical hiding places will make the game extra fun and bonding. You can add in more rules to make it interesting...

• play in the dark with the person seeking using a torch

• play ‘sardines’ so one person hides while the rest count, then everyone looks for that person.  When a seeker finds the hider, the seeker has to squish into the same hiding place and this keeps going until the last seeker finds everyone else squidged in together!

• challenge older kids by setting conditions like you must wear a hat, or your hiding place must begin with the letter 'c'. Or give prizes for inventiveness; lowest hiding place you can find, warmest hiding place, hiding place that gets the biggest laugh from the seeker...

If you want a game that may (and I say ‘may’) buy you a few minutes to yourself, you can set up a hiding game in advance…

• hide lots of things of a certain colour around and then send your small one off with a bag to collect them

• make a pile of toy animals, or a list, and hide a food that each would eat (real/toy/picture/word) so kiddos can seek out each animal’s dinner

• for little ones to enjoy a range of sensations, hide items with different textures in a container and fill it with balls/fabric/sand/rice/balled-up socks so they have to feel around to find each thing. Try putting in pairs of items to give an extra challenge

• and if you don't have time to set anything up, why not try one of these great scavenger hunt ideas? Especially good for older children...

We’ve recently joined the wonderful Give as You Live to help us raise funds for the work we’re doing. As we grow we’ll be applying for grants and generating income through our shop but this is a great way for us to resource the work we’re already doing at the moment, especially in giving away free craft kits. A massive range of businesses are signed up to the scheme so whether you’re shopping online or in stores, buying groceries, flights or home insurance, or even just searching the internet, there’s loads of ways to raise that are completely FREE for you. You can even raise 50p for us (enough to cover two kits!) by just logging in and setting up a profile...

If you’re interested in getting involved in this way then check out our Give as You Live page and let us know so we can raise even more funds by sending you an email invite. Thanks for considering it!