Forest Friday

Session 4

Fourth Class

Explorers

Discovering new, strange looking flowers this week on our way up to our base.

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Getting lost in the gorse.

“I pressed this bramble leaf last week to keep in my explorer bag”.

The hooded crow keeps an eye on our lunches.

Explorers Bag – Explain tools for each pair of scientists.  Add decoration to the bag from your task this week.  

Focus  – working scientifically – observational drawing 

Skills development

• Questioning – “I wonder…” game
• Observing – drawing in detail, labelling drawings
• Predicting – Spot the difference of three habitats.  What will the place be like when we come back next week, what will be the same, what will be different. 
• Investigating – come up with their own investigation.
• Experimenting 
• Estimating – How old is the tree?
• Measuring – how tall is the tree?  
• Analysing
• Recording – making swatches
• Communicating – answering questions, giving a presentation

Roles

—  Botanists – small plants and flowers

—  Botanists/ Dendrologist – trees and shrubs

—  Zoologist- invertebrates

—  Meteorologist – clouds and Beaufort scale – cloud watching

—  Wild Teas – recipes – tea ceremony with nature mandala?

Tasks in pairs (more info on task cards for each role)

1) observational drawing – draw the detail, draw to communicate information, label your drawings

2) Communication – feedback to the group what you observed.

3) Questioning – Group asks questions about what has been observed.  Use who, what, where, where, why, how, I wonder if, as prompts.

Task Card Examples

Dendrology/Botany

Trees and shrubs

Scientific Language for your presentation or labelled drawings

Roots Trunk Branch Twig Bud Flower Leaf

Can you add any more scientific language?

Observe

Draw with labels or discuss

Estimate

How old is this tree?

How tall is the tree?

Measuring – the girth of the tree

Question – 3 questions you have about this tree/shrub

Record – Fill in a swatch card

Foragers for Wild Teas

Observe ingredients Colour Texture Pattern Shape

Write the Recipe

1. Ingredients
2. Method

Create a tea ceremony for the group

• How do you set up the space for tea drinking?
• How do you introduce the tea to the group?
• How can you make it an enjoyable time for others?

Tea tasting.

Survey

• Thumbs up – very good
• Thumbs sideways – ok
• Thumbs down – not good.

Question – 3 questions you have about tea

Record – Fill in a swatch including  recipe and survey results

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Presenting wild tea to the group.

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Field botanists presenting three cornered leek to the group.

Magnifying glass to look closely and to smoke a hole in a leaf.

At one with a tree.

First Class

Celebrate May with a May Crown

Make it with daisy chain or cleavers with dandelions and daisy flowers intertwined.

Visit a May Bush with crowns on. 

Has it leaves? – taste the leaves

Has it buds?

Has it flowers?

Has it thorns?

Story – MAY FAIRIES –

Hawthorn

“Come out and dance,” called the Snow Fairies to the May Fairies.

The May Fairies peeped out of their homes in the hawthorn trees and shivered.

“No, thank you,” they said. “It is too cold out there. Besides, we are busy making our buds.”

They made tiny red-tipped buds and set them on the branches of the trees, two at the foot of each thorn. Then they crept down into their warm homes again to wait for the spring.

With the spring came the merry Sunbeams.

“Come out and dance,” they called.

“Oh! are you there?” called back the May Fairies. “Then we must open our buds, so we have no time to dance.”

They worked hard, blowing out the buds with their dainty breath, till at last the leaves opened and the trees were dressed in fluttering green.

The Spring Fairies came tripping past, waving tasselled catkins in their hands.

“Come out and dance,” they called.

“We have no time. We must make our flower-buds,” replied the May Fairies.

They made their wee round flower-buds and set them on the trees, and blew into them and puffed them out till they looked like tiny snowballs. Harder and harder they blew, until at last the flowers flew open. Then the trees looked as if showers of white stars had fallen on them from the sky in snow-time. How lovely they were! The little flies came from far and near to feast, buzzing out their thankfulness to the fairies for the sweet honey.

The Summer Fairies came with roses and forget-me-nots. “Come out and dance,” they called.

“We have no time,” called back the May Fairies. “We have to make our berries.”

They gently loosened the white petals of the flowers and set them floating on the wind. Then they made the little green seed-balls into berries, blowing them big and round so that the seeds should have room to grow, and polishing the outsides till they turned red and glowed like garnets in the sunshine. What a feast the birds had!

When the fairies had finished it was autumn.

“Come and dance,” called the Leaf Fairies as they fluttered past in their brown and crimson robes.

“We are coming,” called back the May Fairies, “for now our work is done.” They flew down from their tree-homes, free at last to dance through all the golden autumn days.

Looking closely

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  It’s like a winter coat coming off.

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Climbing, swinging and jumping.

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Leaving places for the fairies.

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  A set table with food.

Sneaking up on a bird while camouflaged behind a fern

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Forest Friday

Session 3

Fourth Class

The children create their own stories and creativity. On our way up to the base they found a dead bumble bee. Immediately they began to gather and create a story. They decided he should have a funeral. All the children were involved. It was a wet and chilly day and this kept everyone involved and moving. The plans I have for wet weather are to keep the children warm.

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We continued with our Field Biologists theme.

• Botanists – small plants and flowers
• Botanists/ Dendrologist – trees and shrubs
• Zoologist- invertebrates
• Meteorologist– weather and maps
• Wild Teas – recipes

Each pair of children picked a card with one of these themes that they hadn’t covered last week. Instead of writing they were to be able to present their theme to the group.

Suggested Questions from the group to the Scientists

• What did you examine?
• Where did you find it, shade, under tree/shrub cover, rocks, out in sunlight?
• What was growing around it?
• Were there any animals/ birds on or near it?
• What is its purpose?
• Is it edible?
• What does it taste like? Fruity, Acrid (bitter or harsh), Sharp, Citrusy (lime or lemon), Tart (pleasant sour taste)
• Is it an animal?
• How many legs has it?

The tea makers had to show what plant they used. Serve tea to everyone. They took a tea tasting survey by each taster showing

Thumbs up

Thumps down

Thumbs sideways

The children discovered that they had a lot of crossovers in their themes. The children collecting gorse flowers for the tea found caterpillars in the flowers and passed them on to the zoologists. The botanists choose a gorse bush as their theme and were able to add to the information about gorse.

Jenny’s Group

Making Tea in the Billycan

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Dendrologists at work. Field Biologists starting their work. Zoologists identifying insects they found.

First Class

Finding and wondering about an marble oak gall, a slug and lichen. The children remember so much from their last Forest Friday sessions. They ask and tell each other about their finds.

The slug became a whole world of ideas and stories.

She was named Lola and a tiny little baby slug was found which they called baby Grace. Worlds were made for them. here you see and lovely bowl of fresh salad.

Building houses for fairies

One child hid in a tree to bird watch. He wanted to be camouflaged so we began to look for materials to hide his head when he peered out. Everyone began to make a camouflaged headdress.

Gathering at the end of the session a child told the group a story about an ant with rainbow wings.

Jenny’s group

Predicting what will happen daisies before adding hot water and after.

Lords and Ladies and noticing buds bursting open.

4th Class, Holy Family NS. – Lines to Places

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As with last week we began today’s session by looking at an artwork on screen – using Visual Thinking Strategies a slow looking enquiry based approach to discussing art works with groups. So What do you see? What is going on in this artwork? – These are the opening questions to get the conversation going. I had selected the painting “By the Mill Lake” by Cecilia Dannell to look at to explore how different landscape and a narrative or story can be seen in an artwork even if there are no figures in the painting. So really looking at details and thinking about where this might be and what might have happened there.

We then used long strips of paper to fold into concertina to make 6 separate “panels”. Along the top of these, using some of the word to describe lines from last week we selected six different types of line and drew them in sections. This created like a kind of horizon line that could suggest a place. This was pretty confusing for everyone to began with the example of the castellated line could be steps or a castle looking inside or outside. So this simplified it and clarified it for the group and they began to take different interpretations and thinking of a wide range of places that they could depict and then colour in. So we now have different “sets” or backgrounds” that could become part of our animated project. We took some time at the end to do show and tell and see what different ideas and places everyone had drawn.

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To plan for next week we think we will begin developing characters and also consider how the character might move through the different places – is it a journey, an adventure, a story. We will do some brainstorming on this next week.

Junior Infants, Holy Family NS – Week 2 – Clay cups and Water Carriers!

We began this week by doing a warm up – working with clay can be very physical! So stretching up, stretching out, flicking them in and out, and shaking them out. Loads of energy in our fingers. We were going to introduce some tools to use with the clay – to add to our very handy hands that make very good tools!

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So first we flattened the clay just using some gentle pressing movements and then using lollipop sticks and skewers looked at the different marks and lines and carvings we could make in the flat clay. We realised you could press the stick right through and use it to cut and slice through the clay. some drew pictures on the clay or cut out shapes and many began making pizzas and lollipops and cookies, and some began to create animals through balancing the clay on the sticks like legs. So moving from flat to more 3D building.

I then put a problem to solve to the group -1000s of years ago – Mr and Mrs Stone are in their cave, they’ve had their dinner and Mrs Stone would love a drink of water. So Mr Stone goes off to get some water….where will he get water? How will he collect the water? How will he bring it back to the cave? No buckets, no bowls no cups around – it’s thousands of years ago! We wondered about carrying it in our hands – how would that work? We thought the water would just run off our hands and spill. So we looked around the edge of “the sea” and wondered was there something we could use. Could we use a stone? Could we put a hole in the stone and fill it with water. So using the “stone” shaped round balls of clay we explored how to put a hole in the clay using our thumb and then pinching the clay and stretching it to make the hole bigger but not too thin so it would not break.

Great energy as everyone got busy and created a small cup or bowl or something to carry the water. They were all shapes and sizes! Fabulous! After break we decided to do an experiment with the cups to see if they would hold the water. It was very tense as we tested each vessel, we held our breath and poured the water into each one. Some we discovered had holes in them so the water spilled out, some had cracks in the side so the water spilled out! But we had some very solid cups even some with handles that we think will do the job for getting a cup of water for the thirst Mrs Stone back in the cave! A great morning with Junior Infants – lots of building on skills and figuring out!

Forest Friday

Dalkey School Project N.S.

Session 2

Fourth Class

Explorers.

I sent a powerpoint slide about our ideas to the teacher the day before Forest Friday. This has worked well as it gives staff and children time to consider the ideas.

Explorers

Explorers Bag – Explain tools for each pair of scientists.

Directions  Get children to bring a stick and place in centre of circle.  Mark out North/South/East/West.  Choose a direction to explore this week. 

 Focus  – Explorers

• Botanists – small plants and flowers
• Botanists/ Dendrologist – trees and shrubs
• Zoologist- invertebrates
• Meteorologist – weather and maps

Cooks will create wild teas for the biologists

Wild Teas – recipes

 How

• Each week we will have two experts working together from each of these areas of expertise.
• You will do research using drawings and notes in your notebooks
• When you have made your discoveries you will add them into a nature swatch. This can be by done by drawing and writing again or cutting out the information from your notes and gluing in. The front of the page could have drawings and the other side could have written information.

Our Nature Swatches

We will be making our own swatches for each of our fields of expertise.

• Each category will have a swatch
• Each pair each week will fill in one page.
• Each pair will be given a card that will help you.

 Materials

• In your explorer bag- ensure you have a pencil, colouring pencils, black pen, pritt stick, scissors
• We will bring, magnifying glasses,bug boxes, Three meter of string marked in one meters, card for swatches, flasks of hot water, a compass.

We began with an excerpt from Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake.

Story of an explorer

Merlin accepted an offer to study for his PhD  in a tropical island forest in Panama. This is his description of it.

There were green houses for growing plants, drying cupboards filled with bags of leaf litter, a room lined with microscopes, and a walk-in freezer packed with samples: bottles of tree sap, dead bats, tubes containing ticks pulled from the backs of spiny rats and boa constrictors.

The diversity of the forest was reflected in the rich variety of field biologists who came here to study it. Some climbed trees and observed ants. Some set out at dawn every day to follow the monkeys. Some tracked the lightening that struck trees during tropical storms. Some spent their days suspended from a crane measuring ozone concentrations in the forest canopy. Some warmed the soil using electrical elements to see how the bacteria might respond to global heating. Some studied the way beetles navigate using the stars. Bumblebee, orchids, butterflies, – there seemed to be no aspect of life in the forest that someone wasn’t observing.

It is not easy for field biologists. Storms wash away the flags that mark their experiments. Trees fall on their plots. Sloths die where they plan to measure the nutrients in the soil. Bullet ants sting them as they crash past. The forest and its inhabitants dispel any illusions that scientists are in charge. Humility quickly sets in.

The children worked in pairs. Each pair pick up an upside down card. The card told them the area of expertise of field biology that they explore and some ideas they might consider.

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At our base the children marked out the directions using the sun as a guide. They were delighted when we checked with a compass that their directions were accurate. They decided that we would explore the area to the east today.

The job of field biologists was both fun and serious. Children who were finished before others added some of their work onto their explorer bags.

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Swatch Cards

Jenny’s group

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Yummy larch leaves, from a deciduous, coniferous tree.

Field biologists and tea makers at work.

First Class

More dandelion observation and work

The children began with free play. During this time they are always discovering new things. One child found an oak gall. We had a look at the hole where the gall was left. This was a good opportunity to tell the children about oak gall ink and the use of plants to make drawing and writing.

Story – The Legend of the Dandelion

A long time ago a great many little stars lived in the sky with their mother, the Moon, and their father, the Sun. Their mother loved to have them shine brightly as soon as it grew dark, which they usually did like good little stars; but once, when their mother called them to come and light the sky, they did not come quickly, and would not let their light shine.

They acted just like little girls and boys do when they are naughty and do not mind their mother; they hid their faces, and would not look bright and happy. What do you think happened? Their mother found some good little stars that wanted to shine, and then the naughty stars began to fall down from the sky.

Faster and faster they fell till they came down to the earth. Here they became very lonely without their dear mother, and began to cry. They cried themselves to sleep that night, and felt very sorry for being naughty.

In the morning, their father, the Sun, shone out so brightly that everything wakened from sleep, even the little baby stars who had felt so badly. When they saw themselves on the ground they began to cry again, but the Sun felt so sorry for them that he called them to him and smiled upon them kindly. This made them feel happy again.

Then the sun told the little stars that they must always shine on the earth instead of in the heavens, and so make the earth beautiful. So every morning, when the sun shines on the little dandelions, they open their pretty eyes and look like right yellow stars shining in the grass. They are happy now because they make the fields and roadsides pretty with their golden light.

Dandelion invisible ink
The children used the sap inside the dandelion stems to draw. The sap became brown with the sun and the drawing become visible. They added colour using the petals and leaves.

Trying out invisible ink. The white stuff in the stem

Dandelion curls
After we finished our drawings we made some dandelion curls. We removed the flower heads off the stems, and used our nails to split the stems into long strips.  We dropped the strips into some water and after a few minutes we had some curls. The children were fascinated by the curls.

We had lots of free play. The children create their own games. The mats are stepping stones so your feet don’t touch the hot lava. They are always noticing new things like oak galls and labybirds.

Jenny’s First Class Group

Using Dandelions to Draw Dandelions

Dandelion Curls.

What could they be?

Making Dandelion Tea.

Week 1: 4th Class, Holy Family N.S – Drawing and Mark making

Great to be back with Mr.Healy’s 4th Class Group – what a lovely bunch of students! We have worked together nearly every year since they were in Junior Infants. We think we only missed last year! So it is great to be back with them. We had had a very short chat before Christmas about what they would like to focus on during the 9 weeks of Creativity in the Classroom and some of the suggestions were around drawing and animation. I began with having a look at one of my paintings on the screen. I used Visual Thinking Strategies to facilitate the conversation. Visual Thinking Strategies is a way of slow looking, with a group to look and discuss an artwork through enquiry based questions allowing everyone to make observations, comments and contributions to the conversation and build meaning around the artwork. It was a fascinating conversation as everyone pointed out things they could see and wondered what was the connection between the different elements in the painting and what the story was within the artwork. We could be there yet!

I wanted to look at an artwork that could have many interpretations and also to get the class thinking about how if they are creating an animation that they will need to consider place, setting, characters and narrative or story. And by looking at an artwork they could see all the elements and artist considers in composing a painting.

So building on the idea of individual interpretations we began a drawing and mark making experiments – every one had three drawing tools – pencil, pen and graphite. I gave some “descriptive” words – long, straight, twisty, tangled, slow, fast etc. and everyone was to draw a line that reflected that word. And then we switched drawings around and swopped between people so we were drawing over each others drawings. Finding spaces, building up layers. We continued this until the drawings were really dense with marks and had been passed around a number of times and worked over. I then asked the class to find a part of the drawing they liked or that interested them and to fold the paper to isolate this part of the drawings. We then had a chat about why people had selected what they had selected. Sometimes it was the shape of a line, the pattern or they way different lines met or crossed each other.

This worked really well I thought as they students were making judgements of the drawing based purely on what it looked like as an abstract mark and a drawing – not because it looked like something or represented something. Our next stage was to cut out strips of paper that now would become our lines in 3D. We looked at what we could do with one strip of paper – folding, rolling, tearing, joining, layering etc. So taking their selected drawing as a starting point the class used strips of paper to create their drawing in 3D. This worked out wonderfully! Such creative and inventive responses as the class experimented with the simplest of materials but testing the limits of what could be done with different processes. We had such a busy session I only got to take a few images of the selected areas of the drawings and some of the constructed drawings. We will continue with experimental drawing and gestural mark making next week.

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Week 1: Junior Infants, Holy Family NS. – Holy Clay!

Great to be finally back with Holy Family N.S and begin our next set of workshop sessions with Junior Infants and 4th Class. I had only very briefly met the Ms.Henry’s Junior Infants before – so it was very exciting to be embarking on 9 weeks of Creativity in the Classroom with our super group of 15 Junior Infants. We had decided to being with clay for the first couple of sessions. So we began with introductions and and a chat about what I use in my studio to make my paintings. Then we did a warm up and a loosen up of our hands, fingers, wrists and arms – we did some stretches to make our selves as tall and then as wide as we could. All warming up before working with the clay.

First we looked at the clay – the colour, shape and size. We listened to it too! No sounds from the clay. Then we touched it gently with our fingers – it felt smooth, and cold and maybe a little bit wet, hard but maybe soft too. We thought it might be heavy so we picked it up and passed it between our hands to feel the weight of it. We squeezed it, we pulled it apart, we flattened it, we flattened it and let our fingers walk over it making holes. Then we tried to make a hole all the way through so we could see through the clay.

Next we began breaking the clay into smaller bits and began rolling these into worms and snakes. We tried rolling with our hands, spreading our fingers to make the snakes longer. Our snakes were all different – some short, some long, some thin, some thick., some long and bendy. Someone suggested we make the worms into a square – then that started looking like a picture so some started using the worms to make pictures. I suggested we could join up the worms again in our groups…but everyone was enjoying making and exploring with the clay and changing it into different things. So we just carried on and then we took some time at the end to let everyone go around and see what everyone else had made. They could ask each other any questions about what they had made.

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After break we had a quick look and chat at some cave painting picking out different animals we could see in the shapes and colours. We might come back to this next week. And then we had a recap of all the things we had made and drew them using markers and card. It’s a lovely way of the children thinking about what they made and capturing it in drawing, But also quite a complex task in translating something they made in 3D back to a 2D drawing.

Next week we will continue our explorations in clay!

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Forest Friday

Dalkey School Project

Session 1

Early session – Fourth class from 8.30 am until 11.00

Later session – First class from 11.30am until 2.20.

On Wednesday I visited each class in school to get ourselves ready for Forest Friday sessions. Each fourth class pupil received an explorer bag. They put their name on each bag and some gave themselves a Forest name too. They will be using these bags to collect, write, draw, print on during the sessions.

Fourth Class

Getting to know our new base.

On the way up the children collected wood sorrel to make tea.

The Children had lots of free play to explore the new base. They were really happy with it as it has five lovely oak trees, lots of bramble and gorse bushes.

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They marked the different directions on the ground and drew these on their explorer bags. They chose a plant from each direction and printed these on their bags and on fabric using the Hapa Zome technique. Hapa zome is the Japanese art of bashing the natural pigment out of leaves and flowers on to fabric to create prints. The name translates from Japanese as ‘Leaf Dye’ Some plants worked well and they got the shape and others they managed to get the colour. The found out that the juicier plants worked best.

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First Class

We had a look at dandelions on the way up as there were a lot of them in flower. We had a look at how their leaves grow from the ground and the shape of them.

We used the same base with the oaks and gorse. The children collected gorse flowers and made tea. They spent a lot of time climbing and exploring.

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During tea break I read a dandelion story.

Story – Dandelion

Long, long ago, the flowers had an argument about which of them was the most special, the most loved by the humans and by the fairies. The argument lasted for weeks, with each flower claiming to be the most special and the most loved. Finally, all of the flowers agreed to let the Flower Fairies decide.
The Flower Fairies decided to test each flower by asking them one question.  Where would you most like to live?
The first flower the Fairies talked to was the Rose. 
“Where would you most like to live?” they asked it.
“I would like to climb the castle wall.” said the Rose. “And then kings and queens and nobles would pass by every day and exclaim over my beauty, my scent and my delicate nature.”
Next the Fairies came to a tulip, standing tall and proud. “Where would you most like to live?” they asked the Tulip. 
“Oh, I want to live in a public garden” said the Tulip. “Where everyday people would come and admire my wonderful colors and see how straight and tall I stand.”
They walked until she came to a forest. There they found some Violets. They asked them “Where would you most like to live, little Violets?” “Oh” said the violets quietly “We like it here hidden in the woods where no one can see us and where the trees keep the sun from dulling our beautiful color.” The fairies thanked the Violets and walked on looking for more flowers to talk to.

The little Fairy came to a field with bright fluffy yellow flowers on long thin stalks. The leaves were long and jagged and very close to the ground. But the flowers….oh how happy and cheerful they looked in the field!
“Little one” said the Flower Fairy “What are you called and where would you like to live?”

“I am a dandelion” said the little flower.  “I’d like to live where ever there are children. I want to live beside the road, and in the meadows, and push up between the sidewalks in the cities, and make everyone feel happier when they see my bright colours.” The Dandelion chattered on happily saying “I want to be the first flower that the children pick in the spring and take to their mothers. And if a child makes a wish and blows my seeds, I could carry that wish on the wind.”

The Flower Fairies smiled brightly and said “Little Dandelion, you are a very special flower and you shall have your wish! You will blossom everywhere from spring till Autumn, and be known as the children’s flower.” 
And this is why the dandelion comes so early and pushes her head up everywhere with such strength and determination. And why she is so loved by children throughout her long life.

Close Up

The children observed dandelions. Noah (our expert) said that they are called dent de lion, or lion’s tooth because of the jagged leaves.

The children worked together to create land art Dandelions.

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Finishing circle

Forest Friday

Final sessions of 2020

“It wasn’t a game actually, it was the most scary, most fun opportunity of my life, it is not a game it is real!”

What a year! The school returned in September having been closed for almost 6 months. A lot had changed in the children’s lives. The school decided to run Forest School for two days a week enabling four classes to participate.

We were very grateful to get further funding from Creative Ireland which allowed us to continue with second class for a further four weeks and give sixth class four weeks to explore what they learned from forest school. Sixth class are the first group to participate in Forest School every second year.

Sixth Class

Session 4

Filming

Last week had been extremely difficult for the sixth class. It was bitterly cold and many were not dressed for such a cold wind. There were a lot of starts and stops and they did their best to work together to make two films to instruct younger children how to play some forest school games. They got some footage and did well considering the weather. It was still very valuable as they were able to look back on their footage and evaluate it. They learned a lot. On Thursday before our Forest session they got into their groups to plan. As leaders we had to decide how to go ahead this week as it was to be the last. We decided to add another theme that they could chose if they wished as we feared that they might have lost heart on the filming they had already done. Also we thought they would get more done if they worked in pairs or groups of three.

An Eco Friendly Christmas

An Eco Friendly Christmas

Work in pairs or groups of three.

Make a film to show how the woods can provide us with materials to make and decorate a Christmas Tree.

• Land Art Christmas tree (build the tree shape on the ground)
• A star from willow
• Pinecone baubles
• Leaves and ivy vines to decorate the tree
• Ivy or willow wreaths
• Wood cookie decorations

Each pair films where to find their materials and shows how to make each decoration. Finally film each group decorating the tree.

Our group chose the Christmas theme. The weather was warmer, there was no wind, they had learned a lot from the previous weeks on what worked best, they were in smaller groups and it all came together so well. Everybody seems to feel challenged and stimulated. They were so inventive and humorous. There was a lot of craic.

Playing with reflection.

The final scene of the film. Creating a snow cloud over the Christmas tree by blowing flour.

Jenny’s Group

A Natural Christmas

Filming.

Next Thursday instead of preparing for Forest Friday the children will edit their films and on Friday they are having a Film Festival. I look forward to my invite.

Second Class

Session 13

This session was completely child led. The children arrived with a story of monsters and continued this game at base camp. The ideas developed as they made traps, cameras, weapons. They talked as they worked on ideas and these ideas morphed as they got passed on between children.

Describing the monster and the game through drawing.

Recordings from the children

“We’re weaving a big net to get the Diplo Rat away, and this might be the last time we see each other.”

“I’m picking pine needles to hurt his eyes, maybe make him stop from seeing.” “He’s giant, so he can shape shift. Normally his tail is the size of that tree. He’s a cross from a dinosaur and a rat.”

Child, while drawing

“ I have all the cameras here, and these are the screens”

“ He’s a shape shifter, he changes his size. So if he sees dogman, (a man who has a dog head) he changes to a squirrel, as dogman get easily distracted.”

Me, at the end of the session as I walk down the hill beside a child,

“ That looked like a good game today?”

Child

“It wasn’t a game actually, it was the most scary, most fun opportunity of my life, it is not a game it is real!”

Forest Friday

Filming

Session 3

Sixth Class

Session 12

Second Class

Sixth Class

Continuing filming from last week.

The weather really dictated what we did today. In the morning it was very windy, icy and sunny for sixth class. The children came up with their plan to continue filming games. They worked hard initially but then the cold got to some who weren’t moving around.

Somebody said they felt they had brain freeze. We had a break with hot pine needle tea.

They choose a sunnier area to get some more footage for the second game that they have planned to film.

Choosing a background for Beetle Tag filming.

Warming up by hiking to the quarry. The children stopped to explore areas. Everyone got a little warmer.

Jenny’s Group

Silhouette and Shadow fun

Filming.

Second Class

It began to sleet by the time second class got to Killiney Hill. They have a natural sense on keeping warm. They decided to build a fire and move logs to sit on.

Gathering sticks and pine cones, and rubbing sticks together to light the fire kept them warm, it didn’t matter that they didn’t get a flame.

They discovered that the robin loves ham and bread. He kept coming back for more and got closer and closer each time.

We learned some new games to keep warm, Fox and Rabbit, Eagle Eye and You’re Only Safe if…