Farmer Fern Thanks You!

The falling autumn leaves and cooler nights in the garden means that it is time for our season of puppet sessions to wrap up for the year!

Heartfelt thanks to all our generous sponsors, partners, creative mentors & volunteers, namely...

Nathan, Erica & their wonderful family! 
Lea & volunteers at the Guelph Enabling Garden! 
Louisa, Sarah, Alisa & Marilyn, our creative mentors / puppeteers! Judith & Marcey of Spark of Brilliance! 
Guelph Community Foundation ~ Musagates Fund! 
Fred, Lynn and Susan of Trellis Mental Health & Developmental Services and Sue at KidsAbility!
Staff & volunteers at Playsense, The Well, Silent Voice Canada and First Steps Day Care!
and finally...all the great kids who attended our puppet sessions!

(For more information on our sponsors & partners, click here.)

See you in the Springtime when the birds start building their nests again and the lambs & kids are born!

    Photo by Van Waffle

Farmer Fern T-Shirts with Nathan's Drawing

Drawing by Nathan Gatten

Even though Farmer Fern's red flannel shirt is his favourite and warmest, he is getting his very own T-shirt printed soon! It will have a drawing of him that Nathan drew (pictured here).
If you'd like to order a t-shirt for yourself, contact us (with your t-shirt size) at farmerfernpuppets@gmail.com for colours, styles and prices.

Puppets & Preschoolers

Today, Farmer Fern met a lot of new friends. About 20 preschoolers from First Steps Day Care came to the Guelph Enabling Garden to watch a puppet play and to make a butterfly or dragonfly puppet.






Marilyn, one of our fabulous volunteers, prepared the craft activity ...she brought burrs from the forest, maple keys, glue guns, highlighters, black felt-tip markers, scissors and paper.

Here are some photos of the beautiful burr-butterflies and dragonflies that the children made with these materials.

Thanks for visiting and great work, kids! That was fun!

Where are the Kids?!

On August 15th, 2012, Farmer Fern, Cousin Cassidy, PJ Worm and a group of other puppet folk gathered at the Guelph Enabling Garden, ready to put on another puppet play. A photographer from one of the local papers arrived. The play was about to begin. It was nearly 10am but ...where were the kids?!!

Farmer Fern started to get a little worried. You see, puppets like to have an audience; it is no fun to put on a play without one!
Then, someone had a thought!
Maybe the kids can't find us?!  
Then, someone had an idea!
Maybe we could blow our horns and rattle our rattles and sing our songs so that the children would HEAR where we are and then follow the sounds to find us. So, we did just that. We walked around the garden, with finger puppet birds on our fingers. Whistling and chirping, we walked through the park, to the swings, around the curving paths...and finally the children came, from many directions! And then Farmer Fern smiled and started the play!! Yay!!

After the play, all the children made beautiful finger puppet birdies. You can see one here.

Thanks to the kids & parents in the community for joining in...and thanks to Nathan, Erica, Marilyn, Lea and Louisa for offering a great session!

And a special thank you to Jessica Lovell of the Guelph Tribune for making a special appearance!

Farmer Fern learns Sign Language!

Today, Farmer Fern took a trip to Toronto to visit a children's camp with his puppet friends. Some of the kids at the camp have parents or siblings that are deaf or hard of hearing, so they use their hands and facial expressions to communicate. That's called Sign Language. One of the staff members at Silent Voice will tell you about that in this video...

Farmer Fern at the Guelph Enabling Garden

Last Thursday, I met some great kids at the Guelph Enabling Garden with my friend, Lea, who is a Horticultural Therapist there and also with my cousin, Cassidy. Cassidy had never been to the garden before, so I answered all his questions about the garden, then took him...and all the kids too... on a little tour of my favourite place alongside the Speed River at Riverside Park. Then we all made butterfly puppets (some actually turned into snakes and bunnies!) which fluttered around the garden visiting the various flowers. We sang songs and played on a thumb piano. It was lots of fun! Thank you to the Lea, the Playsense Kids and Staff for a wonderful morning!

Here's a video that introduces you to the creative mentors of this puppet program: Nathan, Alisa, Louisa and Sarah! Lea (in the green shirt) is one of them too. Thanks to her for inviting them, and also to our friend Erica (behind the camera) for this short video!

Cousin Cassidy and I will be back at the Guelph Enabling Garden this Wednesday, July 16th. The puppet show starts at 10 a.m. We hope to see you there! 

The Guelph Enabling Garden is located in Riverside Park. Here is a link to their blog:
http://guelphenablinggarden.blogspot.ca/p/upcoming-events.html 


 

Wiggly Worms and Soil

The Worm 

No, little worm, you need not slip

Into your hole, with such a skip;

Drawing the gravel as you glide

On to your smooth and slimy side.

I’m not a crow, poor worm, not I,

Peeping about your holes to spy,

And fly away with you in air,

To give my young ones each a share.

O no, I’m only looking about,

To see you wriggle in and out,

And drawing together your slimy rings,

Instead of feet, like other things:

So, little worm, don’t slide and slip

Into your hole, with such a skip!

ANN TAYLOR

Worms play an important role in the garden.  As Charles Darwin once said, "They are the intestines of the Earth."  These little 'soil farmers' provide many benefits to plants and to us just by simply living, eating and reproducing.

Some of the wonderful things worms do in the garden:

• Worms eat old plant material and food scraps left over in the soil and break them down
• Worm castings or 'poop' provide food and nutrients for the plants to grow
• When worms wiggle through the soil the tunnels they leave behind allow air and water to filter into the ground and loosen the soil for plant roots to grow

To learn more about worms here are some cool links to check out:

• National Geographic Kids
• 
  

To learn more about where your food comes from watch this fun video and song from the Banana Slug String Band:

Spring and Robins

Hello friends and Happy Spring!

One of my many favourite things about Spring is watching Robin play in my garden and hop-hop-hop through the grass.

Sometimes I like to talk to Robin when he visits my garden in the early morning and late afternoon. I whistle to him, "Cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up." Click here to listen to my friend Robin!

I have learned a lot from watching and talking to Robin!

I have learned:

Mr. Robin is brighter in colour than Mrs. Robin and has a reddish orange chest, with a grey body, dark tail feather and a white bottom.

Robin's eggs are light blue and about the size of a quarter.

Mrs. Robin builds her nest in trees, bushes and hedges and even on houses. Her nest is bowl-shaped and is about 6 inches across. The inside of her nest is about 4 inches in diametre, which is big enough to hold 2-4 eggs.

Mrs. Robin builds her nest 5-25 feet above the ground and is usually protected from rain and predators.

Once Mrs. Robin lays her eggs, they take 11-14 days to hatch.

Mrs. Robin sits on the nest to incubate the eggs.

The eggs hatch within a day or two of each other.

Nestlings (the baby birds) are pink with little tufts of feather after they hatch. Their eyes are closed when they hatch, and have blue bulges where their eyes will develop. Their eyes will open when they are about 5 days old. The nestlings take about two weeks to develop feathers before leaving the nest.

Watch the video below to see Mrs. Robin patiently and attentively raise 4 baby robins over 4 weeks, with help from Mr. Robin!

More Video From Farmer Fern's Visit to the Well!

Thank you to my good friends Anders and Nathan for making this video for us!

Farmer Fern at The Well

Farmer Fern

On April 27, 2012, my friends Lea, Louisa, Sarah, Erica, Nathan and I visited Tim and his friends at The Well. We had a super time making puppets and I even had the chance to put on a show! Everyone had lots of fun, and now I have lots of new friends that I hope to see again soon!

Farmer Fern Goes to the Well

Friday, April 27th the Farmer Fern & Friends Puppet Program will be running a puppet workshop at The Well located at Kortright Presbyterian Church in Guelph.  Our group will be preforming a puppet play followed by seed planting and puppet making.  This weekend I made the samples of the bird puppets we will be creating with the participants of the workshop.  These bird puppets were quick, easy, and a lot of fun to make and provide endless possibilities for creating different looks. - Sarah