Day 230 - Forest School

Forest School again today, volunteering with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust.

At the Kids Only session, the group were read the story of the Rainbow Serpent (an aboriginal creation story) to begin a snake themed session.  After listening to the story, we played a trust and communication game where the children pretended to be a snake, with a leader at the front and the rest of the snake wearing blindfolds!

After playing 'Blind Snake' we all regrouped in a circle and then went off to find an interesting object that could represent something else to use as a storytelling prompt. After some searching time, we all went back to the circle and passed around a story stick (like a journey stick, but adding bits of the story), taking it in turns to build up a story about a snake. It started off brilliantly, but with an all boy group this time, soon became a tale of snakes eating children one by one, with not a lot else going on, so we moved on to the next activity - making an elder snake.

This is a simple outdoor craft requiring just  elder branches, secateurs, bradawls, some string and a pen! After the usual tool safety talk, the first task is to cut some pieces of elder to make up your snake

Then use a bradawl to push the pith from the middle and make a hole through each piece.

Once that's done it's just a case of threading the elder pieces on to your string, tying a large enough knot at each end and cutting in a fork to one end of the string to make a tongue (or raffia in this case, for the purpose of making a forked tongue) . Then, using a pen, draw on eyes and a pattern.  Simple! Though the threading and knots were tricky as it was so cold, we didn't have full use of our fingers today!

After the Kids Only session, we had a Family Forest School group, for younger children and their adults. We walked to a different site for today's activity (to rest the usual one due to all the mud we've churned up working there each month!).

Here, we made some Boggart Homes

This one, when finished, included a rain water collecting system...

This one had a barbecue and a trampoline...

Whilst this was the chief boggart's luxury home, with two stories and a roof garden...

This one had an arched doorway...

After spending a while building the boggart homes, we mixed up magic, smelly potions and then thought of some magic words to say as we poured the potion around our Boggart homes, by way of protecting them and helping them to stay standing!

As we walked back to the car park, we found a small tree covered in lengths of wool in a variety colours...a gift from the Boggarts to say thank you for being friendly and welcoming and building a little Boggart village ;)

We each took two strands of wool and twisted them together to make a little Boggart bracelet to take home!  Simple, family fun in the woods!