With secret doors, knobs to twiddle and control panels galore, this harvest ‘machine’ was the focus of a Big Draw activity I organised recently for a lovely local community event, Southfields Harvest. This year’s Big Draw theme was STEAM Powered – bringing together Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths.

Children drew fruit and veg to drop in the hoppers at one end, added dials, switches and various secret ingredients through the little doors, and then created some imaginative finished products to appear in the ‘output’ hatch. The doors in particular kept many little fingers busy for much of the afternoon – and even the mayor dropped in to participate.

Many thanks to Southfields Harvest, and to St Barnabas Church for hosting the event – and also to Work and Play scrapstore for plenty of paper and the rather classy doorknobs.