Autumn Highlights 2024
Beehive Garden at Dunbar Nursery
There is nothing quite like kicking through piles of autumn leaves to make us feel happy, so we raked some into heaps so the children of the Beehive could have lots of fun playing in them and throwing them above their heads for them to tumble down in a mini red and orange whirlwind. It is a lovely time of year. Each Monday our wonderful new volunteer recruits from the Grammar school have been coming down to play with the children and organising nature-based activities for them. We have made leafy lion pictures gathering up the autumn leaves to make lion mane art. We have played lots of fun garden games to keep us warm and toasty. We have scattered more wild flower mix onto the slight embankment at the back of the garden and we are hoping for another glorious display of poppies and cornflowers in the spring/summer. We call this area our Bee Highway!
Now that the young volunteers feel more confident in their interactions with the little ones they have been offered more volunteering in the nursery after school on Fridays, this will help them gain lots more valuable experience and also help them gain more Saltire hours. All of our young volunteers are signed up for a Saltire Award when they start their volunteering journey with us. The Saltire Awards are the Scottish Government’s way of celebrating, recognising and rewarding the commitment, contribution and achievements of young volunteers.
On Friday mornings Jasmine also from Dunbar Grammar comes along to volunteer with me, Jasmine has a great sense of fun and creativity, we loved her pass the pumpkin game at Halloween! Speaking of pumpkins we managed to grow five portly pumpkins in the poly, one for each nursery room!
This month at the Beehive we took delivery of our beautiful, bespoke raised beds one for each nursery room and they have the names of each room engraved on them, such a lovely touch, they look terrific! At our last volunteering session we had four families volunteer to help us move the beds to their permanent site and fill them with compost. Thank you families! The green goddess compost comes from Caledonian Horticulture and is ‘free’ but there is a delivery charge per bag, worth knowing. The lovey larch was kindly gifted from Craig Brown over at Tyninghame Sawmill and the raised beds were put together by the lovely folk at the Dunbar Shed and delivered by my man with the van aka David at Treetek. One bed has already been planted up with onions and garlic. Thank you so much to everyone for your time, your kindness and generosity in making this happen!
In other news huge thanks to Jen Walker aka ‘The Hedgehog Lady’ who came down to help us with our autumn garden open day. Each season we host a garden open day for parents and carers to show them what we have been getting up to in the Beehive Garden (and so I can try and get some more recruits for our Saturday sessions!) We had lots of hedgehog themed stations, including clay modelling, colouring in, glitter tattoos and a games station. The children had lots of fun and Jen was able to chat to parents on how to make their gardens more hedgehog friendly.
The Green Team
Pumpkin carving is a great sensory activity, here are Gordon and Michael’s wonderful creations. We have also enjoyed some lovely autumn rambles in and around Dunbar finished off with a nice cuppa and slice of cake at the garden centre!
Day Centre Buddies
At Dunbar Day Centre volunteers help serve lunch clear, tidy away dishes, make a cuppa and then spend some time blethering and hosting quiz games. We have 4 new volunteers at the day centre and already 3 of them have reached their 10 hour Saltire Awards. This project is much loved and I am delighted that the young people and the service users get so much out of it. I check in regularly with young people to see how they are getting on.. Ava our newest recruit had this to say about volunteering at the day centre “I love being around the elderly people. I enjoy working with everyone, the staff are very friendly and supportive, it’s a great vibe.’ Thanks Ava!
