Category Archive

Only a few of us managed to go to this but the weather was great and we did some games with the other groups in the District out on the grass: a football version of rounders, the Giants-Wizards-Elves game and some parachute game then a big game of Sharks resulting in an injury to Poppy in our group but soon plastered and she was up and running. We didn’t stay til the end where other groups did performances and ate Ploughmans and enjoyed a ceilidh, next year…

Weather very sunny so we mooched about in the Quaker Meeting House garden. We had a circle time and found out how everyone’s holiday had been. We then played Duck Duck Goose and did some ‘dot voting’ - I had a list of crafts and activities we could do and everyone got to put a sticker next to their favourite 3, tent putting-up, cardboard cities and making windmills being the favourites so far…

I told the story of the Tortoise and the Magic Tree and we sang our song. Nice and laid back today!

Nige opened the session with some running around in the hall, which sorted him out and the kids seemed to fancy doing it too (ho ho ho!). This was followed by a longish circle time where everyone had the chance to say something and to think about their Woodcraft names (so far we have the likes of Sleeping Tiger, Cherry Blossom, Rambling Rose, Polar Bear and Snowflake Star).

Gem then made pine cone bees with the children - wrapping yellow wool around the cones and around the netting wings, they looked fab and they all went into the garden to buzz them around to say hello to one another! Thanks Gem!

Paula told the story of the Monkey and the Papa God, about a monkey who loved honey. Pete played Abumdie on the guitar and the children were picking up the actions. We closed with the Sparkling Seahorses song and alot of loud shouting ‘goodbye’, a sort of primal scream therapy I think! Oh and Lindsey made us all a grand cuppa, thanks to all.

Weather: windy but bright

We had quite a lot of children today, partly as lots of us turned up and partly as we’ve been reluctant to turn people away. It was great, as usual, but we need to stop taking more children now!

We did a long-ish circle time to try to get some names but need to work out a better way to do this. We looked at some seeds in various fruits and vegetables and then put some alfalfa seeds in cotton wool egg box nest for watering at home. We went outside and let off some steam with the seesaw etc and parachute then Karen brought her guitar and some instruments for a rendition of ’she’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes’ - amazing concentration by those who joined in, well done!

Paula told the story of the Little Red Hen and the Ear of Wheat on a growing theme and sang our Sparkling Seahorses song. Next week pine cone bees with Gem!

Weather: spring-like, slightly chilly, clean and crisp

We met in St Andrews Park and coloured bunny masks to prepare for our egg rolling and hunting.

We squeezed some orange juice with a lemon squeezer thingy and some of the largest oranges available in the greater Bristol area. Paula forgets knife, Lindsey, like every good bushcrafter has about her person a small but deadly Swiss army knife. Orange juicing goes down a treat.

Egg rolling goes quite well but some initial concerns (voiced with wails) about the sharing aspect (none of us could bring ourselves to buy nasty eggs or waste free range / organic eggs) so we’d boiled our oldest eggs but there weren’t quite enough. Sharing seems to go better once the smashing and exploding of the eggs begins and hilarity takes over.

Egg hunting goes far better with the gentle breeze wafting the sweet smell of fair trade chocolate to the small but perfectly adapted olfactory recepticals of our sniffer children. Eggs were gracefully handed to Paula and equally distributed in a remarkably order fashion. We sang our Seahorse song and then disbanded.

We eagerly await our first Seahorse baby, due on Friday, good luck Cath, Elena, Thalia and their Daddy.

Kite flying at its best - the kids’ like this one.

So with the best planning possible, Paula set off in her car for her Tatty Bumpkin shenanigans, leaving Nige in charge of kicking off events. Despite military-style planning, she forgot to leave him the key to the Quaker Meeting House but left all the kit-and-caboodle in the hall. Despite a million missed (by me) calls and messages, the gang headed off for the park on the most windy day of the year and flew kites and made merry.

We did manage to get a papier mache volcano erupting in the park (thanks Scott, Ezra and Maya for the model, bicarb, vinegar etc) and mess about with ‘telephone tubes’, garden hoses of approx 3m lengths with cardboard cones on them, used as primitive telephones (hey it is Science Week after all!).

Hats off (literally in that wind) to them all (and sorry also) for so gracefully embracing the great outdoors instead of the nice, warm, snug hall with hot tea and a roof and everything… But then that’s the woodcraft folk.

Not our volcano but gives you the gist (instructions in the Boys Annual 2008 and also the Dangerous Book for Boys too)…

To the tune of something about a bullfrog, need to check with Pete!

“We are the Sparkling Seahorses

With out hands linked together a circle with make

Ish - Ash - Osh - Peace!

Together in friendship, we’re the Woodcraft Folk”

thanks Pete for making this up!

It was sunny today so we played around for 10 minutes outside then had a short circle time asking each other whether we’ve ever put up a tent, slept in a tent or enjoyed said tent activity! Everyone had and did enjoy…

Tent erecting went well until Nige discovered he’d forgotten the tent pegs but it did provide a good opportunity to reinforce the old ‘preparation, preparation, preparation’ camping rule! No matter, it did work well and turned out to be quite a boys activity. We managed to get 12 children in the tent but when oxygen supplies ran low we shook them out and played some games.

We did some parachute games, a rolling game where you roll with a partner touching toes and try to maintain contact while you roll along the floor, also a hula hoop game (it has to pass round a circle of people holding hands without letting go). Oh and the usual floor sweeping using their backs by the boys!

We did the story of the Blue Coat again and sang our fab new Sparkling Seahorses song sitting round the ‘camp fire’. A great, if slightly chaotic session!

We gave out the died T-shirts today which looked great and stuck pictures of animals, plants and Power Rangers (?!) on our shoe boxes (which we’ll use to bring things in from home and take stuff home we make).

We came up with our name - Sparkling Seahorses and a song- will type the words for next time and even a tune (thanks Pete!).

This week we sat outside in the garden at the Quaker Meeting House - hoorah for early spring! After a short circle time there was a lot of running around by the boys and some tying done by the girls for our tie die T-shirts (we are dying our shirts orange and purple and then will write and draw on them). I sewed buttons on mine in an attempt to look like Apple Blossom (my chosen Woodcraft name, I’m aspiring to be a Misty Mountain and probably more like a Twittering Sparrow so compromised with this one).

We may have hit on our name - Chipmunks (Chattering Chipmunks, Chocolate Chipmunks or similar)!

While we tied and ran about we all came up with Woodcraft names - Sleeping Tiger, Spotty Cheetah, Little Blackbird, Snowflake Star, Dusky Dolphin, Snow Leopard, Polar Bear, Basking Lizard… We’re going to put this together into a mandala at some point by drawing the animals within a circle and I may try to put it on silk for a flag sometime so it’s our group emblem thingy!

We played some parachute games (On the Beach and Sharks) and then listened to the story of the Boy and the Hunter (a story about a boy who grows up with bears).

Gung Hey Fat Choi! Happy year of the Rat

We did a dragon dance to Chinese New year music today in Woodcraft and made Chinese paper lanterns, ate spring rolls and read the story of the Chinese zodiac.

This is the year of the Rat (Chinese:鼠) who was welcomed in ancient times as a protector and bringer of material prosperity. It is the first of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. Rat is associated with aggression, wealth, charm, and order, yet also associated with death, war, the occult, pestilence, and atrocities. The Year of the Rat is associated with the earthly branch symbol 子.

(the first picture, the dragon head is home made, the lion head was bought from Tehos shop!)

We took lots of sparkly material, puppets, a puppet theatre and facepaints and in two groups made up short and bizarre plays! We showed them to each other - one was about the 2 Cinderellas and the Rainbow Cat and the other was about The Ladybird and the Tree that fell in the Sea.

Today we celebrated the wassail so it was apples all round - drank apple juice, made apples to stick on a tree, banged instruments to wake the apple tree spirit, played guess the fruit by feeling in a bag, did the story of Mr Peabody’s Apples and played with a parachute. Went outside for the first time (the Quaker Meeting House has a small garden.

Getting other parents to help next week, it’s National Storytelling Week so going to dress up, use puppets etc and make up some stories.

We had our first proper meeting today and although lots of people couldn’t make it, it worked I think. It was quite hard work with everything being new for everyone but everyone left happy. We:

• did some running around / crawling / hopping / bum shuffling to get rid of any excess energy!
• ate biscuits
• had circle time, passing a shell to speak and say our names and favourite things to do
• looked at books on plants and animals, did some drawing and made animals out of quick-drying clay
• played with a silk parachute
• had a story called Parrot Tico Tango who kept stealing his friends’ fruit - with a big soft parrot puppet
• sang a song round the campfire (torches under red tissue paper with sticks on the top and the lights out - looks like embers!)

Thanks to everyone who came for the first meeting, slightly chaotic but fun I think. We briefly introduced ourselves and the children then drew round their hands and we’re going to cut them out to make a peace-around-the-world sort of collage. We then played some games - a co-operative style bean bag balancing on head game, chasing the dragon’s tail where we made a long dragon and chased our own tails, we played a parachute game where we wobbled some children in the middle like jelly.

We made a pretend camp fire using a torch and some tissue paper and sang a song with the lights switched out. We then told the story of the Blue Coat and said our goodbyes.