ilultham

 I'm a big fan of learning through doing - I'm very much a kinesthetic learner. So the idea of making this earth oven harder for myself doesn't really phase me. Maybe it should though. But I've decided to make the base out of cob as well!  Then the other day a couple of friends were struggling with childcare (school hasn't started back yet but lots of holiday clubs are already finished), so I said I'd take them all in. And, with my wife, my friend adn her 4 children said they'd come over for a bit of fun. So at it's peak we had 12 children here for a bit of cob making! The base wasn't ready so it was just for learning to use the materials.  We got them breaking up the clay and then mixing it with sharp sand.  It was hard to keep them focused but they had such a great time. I don't think there was a single argument all morning, just lots of smiles and muddy children. I did make them a quick bench with my saw horses so they could do some model maki...

 For a long time now I've been saying how much I'd like to build an earth oven. The trouble with saying it lots, that doesn't mean it happens!  So yesterday each of the children had asked to do something with me (eldest wanted to do green woodwork, middlest wanted to use my pyro pen to burn some pictures onto wood and the youngest wanted to carve some dinosaurs) So I thought maybe we should do something we can all be involved with.  The day before I had started to clear an area for a proper clay oven with the digger. The trouble was I'd never used clay or cob as a building material. The book we were using suggested we make a small oven first (all the materials can be reused anyway) so we set about mixing some cob! We started with some old building sand that had stuff growing in it to make a former for the clay. the girls were hard working in getting the sand up to where we were going to build it.  Once that was roughly built the fun could begin! The boy didn't want ...