This is an update on the park project in Kalasatama. Previous post is here.
After a vote, through facebook and paper form left in a Piggybaggy and City Library community area, the name of the park was decided on – Katiska, a fish trap.
Now for the new additions. The kids from local kindergarten really wanted to come and help with the park, but by the time that was arranged, autumn had arrived. We couldn’t take the 4 and 5 year-olds out on the lashing rain, so we brought the park to them instead. Annika picked up some smaller rocks and we had a painting session (well, two – one with each age group) and the kids covered the rocks in safe and washable finger paint. As they were painting, we all talked about the park and the kids even taught me some Finnish. Once the rocks were dry, Annika and I varnished them with a weather-resistant paint and brought back to the park, for decoration and also for playing some kind of a Finnish game (I’ll tell you about it once I learn how to play it).
To get a donation of some used tyres, I contacted various car repair places, addresses of which I found on the official Nokia tyres web page. A lovely guy, who works for one of them, Rengaskeskus, agreed to donate about 30 tyres for us and even dropped them off to us on his day off. We wanted to use the tyres for sitting, making flower beds and building forts.
Then we held another outdoor painting session. As the temperature was close to zero degrees, only the most hardcore mums and their well wrapped up toddlers took part in the Taidetalkoot (Taide being art, and talkoot – something along the lines of spring clean, a get together of the neighbours to beautify their common areas and have a bbq afterwards). Nonetheless, this is what we had in the end:
Anastasia Artemeva 