With England's men's team playing in the World Cup semi-final, we were a little thinner on the ground than usual this evening. Thankfully, it was a cracking task close to home, so we still made it back in time to catch the match!

Our mission, courtesy of Vice Principal Jane at Holy Trinity Lamorbey Primary School, was to assemble a flat-pack wooden potion table (aka mud kitchen) for the Early Years play area.

After carefully laying out all the components and matching them to the instructions, it was a case of screwing everything together. Teamwork with Jane meant we made swift progress, although all the squatting required to work at toddler height certainly gave our legs a decent workout!

The whole project came together without a hitch, and it was a real pleasure to move the finished potion table into its new home in the outdoor play area. Jane told us the children will be thrilled to discover it tomorrow.

With the summer holidays now upon us, our next visit won't be until Weds 16 September, when we'll be back to paint some outdoor boards and tackle another flat-pack challenge, this time constructing some art easels. Pop the date in your diary and come along to join the fun!

What did you do last night?

We spent a lovely hour in nature, building bug hotels for Holy Trinity Lamorbey Primary School.

Seven of us headed to the school, where a stack of pallets and bricks was waiting to be transformed into new habitats for insects and other tiny residents.

Working in two teams, each took on a hotel of their own. We started with an upturned pallet and filled it with leaves, twigs, fallen branches gathered from around the grounds, plus a haul of pine cones we’d collected and brought along. Once each layer was packed, we set bricks at the corners to act as spacers and repeated the process. By the end we'd created the bug equivalent of two multi‑storey skyscrapers!

Afterwards we enjoyed a slice of battenburg cake (I know, when was the last time you had battenburg!) which rounded off the session very nicely!

It was a really peaceful, enjoyable task: gentle activity, plenty of fresh air, and lots of good chat. And best of all, the new habitats will support the school’s eco learning curriculum, giving pupils a chance to explore and understand the wildlife right on their doorstep.

Next week it's something completely different when we visit Parkview Care Home where they always have something lined up to keep us busy, with their lovely residents lending a hand. Sign up here.

What a lovely task at Holy Trinity Lamorbey Primary School this evening!

After a short run from our meeting point at Sidcup Leisure Centre, Jane the vice principal, explained her plans for turning a stack of pallets into bug hotels in the school's outdoor learning area.

With ideas like this it's well deserved that Jane was recently named Bexley Eco Teacher of the Year 2026, and the school was awarded as runner up in the Bexley Eco Primary School of the Year. (And it's fair to say that we are proud our work at the school has made a small contribution towards this.)

Following Jane's instructions, we set about collecting twigs, branches, leaves, fir cones and bricks from around the grounds, and tore up some cardboard boxes. Then we started building: filling an upside down pallet with the natural materials and cardboard, placing a brick in each corner as a spacer, positioning another pallet on top... and repeating several times until... voilà... we'd made a new wildlife habitat!

We had time to build a second one before packing up and celebrating Ashton's 100th good deed. That's a whole lot of helping out in our local community, and it felt right that Ashton should wear our superhero cape to mark the occasion!

In the coming weeks, pupils at Holy Trinity Lamorbey Primary will continue adding more material into the bug hotels, and we'll be back in a month to add roofs and wire casing to stop the contents falling out.

If you fancy spending some fun time outdoors in a midweek antidote to a busy day at work, come along and join us.

This month's visit to Holy Trinity Lamorbey Primary School was a fun inside - outside double act.

Inside, Team Paint picked up classroom decorating where we left off last time. With a couple of walls already done, we wanted to finish the rest to leave the space looking clean, warm and ready for learning.

Outdoors, Team Green took advantage of the warm-ish evening, sawing branches from a felled tree into short lengths that will be used to make wildlife-friendly mini dead-hedges 🐛🪲 and cosy homes for hedgehogs 🦔.

The hour flew past and we packed away paint, brushes and rollers and collected up saws and loppers, then posed for the traditional team photo in the fading light.

Just before leaving, Vice Principal Jane offered us seedling cherry trees that pupils had grown from stones collected in last year's bumper crop of fruit from the tree in their outdoor learning area. Susan, Caroline and Simon headed home, very pleased with these unexpected gifts 🪴.

Over the summer months we're looking forward more outdoor projects at the school... fingers crossed some of them line up with this year’s cherry season! 🍒

It was full-on painting action at our monthly session at Holy Trinity Lamorbey Primary School last night.

On our previous visit we tackled two rather bold feature walls — one bright yellow and one deep claret — swapping the brash colours for something a little warmer. We're still debating whether the shade is technically 'cream' or 'magnolia', but whatever its official name, the school loved the new look so much they asked us back to paint the rest of the walls to replace their stark white.

We got busy with brushes, rollers and trays of paint, working in teams across the two classrooms. Impressively we mostly managed to get it all done within our allotted hour. Caretaker Andy will handle the high bits that were just out of our reach.

A second coat might still be needed, but the transformation is already clear to see.

Keeping a close eye on proceedings throughout was Brecon the school dog, who enthusiastically supervised, posed for photos and treated us to a few tricks. There were also a few musical interludes, with spontaneous renditions of songs from the musicals. (Oliver! and West Side Story proved particularly popular choices 🎵🎶.)

We'll be back again in April, so if you'd like to join the fun, come along! No painting experience required and we might actually settle the debate about the paint colour if we remember to check the label on the tin. Oh and singing is entirely optional.

After a short run for some of us, we all had a busy, chatty hour at Holy Trinity Lamorbey Primary School.

The bright yellow and heavy maroon walls in three classrooms are now on their way to a warm new paint colour. And one of the book cupboards is looking much tidier.

We're mid-makeover... come and join us next month* to keep it going!

• No decorating experience needed.