Sparkling Seahorses Woodcraft Folk - North Bristol Woodchips

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.

Wassailing refers, among other things, to the practice of singing to trees in apple orchards in cider-producing regions of England. Wassail is an ale-based drink seasoned with spices and honey. It was served from huge bowls, often made of silver or pewter and often passed around the room to be shared - known as the Loving Cup. The Wassail bowl would be passed around with the greeting, ‘Wassail’.

Wassail gets its name from the Old English term “waes hael”, meaning “be well”. It was a Saxon custom that, at the start of each year, the lord of the manor would shout ‘waes hael’. The assembled crowd would reply ‘drinc hael’, meaning ‘drink and be healthy’.

As time went on, the tradition was carried on by people going from door to door, bearing good wishes and a wassail bowl of hot, spiced ale. In return people in the houses gave them drink, money and Christmas fare (special foods eaten during Christmas time e.g. mince pies) and they believed they would receive good luck for the year to come.

The contents of the bowl varied in different parts of the country, but a popular one was known as lambs wool. It consisted of ale, baked apples, sugar, spices, eggs, and cream served with little pieces of bread or toast. It was the bread floating on the top that made it look like lamb’s wool.

Apple tree wassailing is a ceremony which involves drinking to the health of the apple trees.

The Apple trees were sprinkled with wassail to ensure a good crop. Villagers would gather around the apple trees with pots and pans and made a tremendous racket to raise the Sleeping Tree Spirit and to scare off demons.

The biggest and best tree was then selected and cider poured over its roots. Pieces of toast soaked in cider were placed in the forks of branches. The wassail song was sung or chanted as a blessing or charm to bring a good apple harvest the following year.

This custom was especially important during a time when part of a labourer’s wages was paid in apple cider. Landlords needed a good apple crop to attract good workers. Wassailing was meant to keep the tree safe from evil spirits until the next year’s apples appeared.

Thanks to Woodland Junior School in Kent for that info! 

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 for coming along the other day, it was in the middle of a very
> busy spell for us so hope it didn’t seem too disorganised! I think there
> are a lot of tired children at this point in this term (my own
> included!) so hopefully it will be easier for them after the Christmas
> break and a good winter thing to do when there’s not so much running
> around outside to be done.
> 
> Can you include your phone numbers in a reply to this please? Also check
> out http://northbristolwoodchips.wordpress.com where I’ll put news and
> stuff.
> 
> I realised there were loads of things I didn’t say so I’ll say them
> here. First of all, it would be really good to get some idea of who
> thinks they would be able to do it. A couple of people said they were
> going to leave it for a term as their children were tired after school.
> Let me know if anyone else feels like this. We need 15 at £1.50 per 4-6
> year old a session to make it work money wise, although I’m working on
> some fundraising plus we’re getting some money from the District to help
> start up, so I need to know if we need to find more (we currently have
> 14 x 4-6 year olds and a few littlies if you all want to come minus
> those who’ve said they can’t). If we pay half termly like this and have
> at least 15 then if the children are tired and you don’t come for a week
> or two it’ll still work - I think we’ll have to accept that not everyone
> will come every week as they’re still young, and plan activities
> accordingly (ie not spanning several weeks in case weeks are missed).
> 
> I am happy to run the logistical bit of it and open and close the
> sessions and have some ideas for the first few sessions then if anyone
> wants to run an activity go for it! Nige is going to do the treasurer’s
> bit but it would be much easier if we could pay per half term (so £9 for
> 4-6 year olds, maybe a couple of pounds for littlies, depending on
> numbers) if that’s OK otherwise come mid-Feb there will be two people
> there and it’ll all go wrong on the finances!
> 
> Re: siblings, I think with the lobby as a spare room and outside later
> on in the year we should be able to work with parents and little ones
> staying if you’d rather do that than leave them, especially in the
> beginning. We can have a cut-down version of the activity for little
> ones maybe in the lobby if we’re doing something a bit more grown-up.
> 
> Some of the first few week’s activities will be around forming an
> identity (finding a name, choosing Woodcraft names, maybe making our own
> song, mandala, totem, banner, flag or the like!) and getting to know
> each other and later on we can work on more outdoorsy, bushcraft type
> stuff and plan a short camping expedition, maybe with some of the St
> Andrews or other Elfins groups. There is also a Woodcraft hut at
> Watercatch Farm outside Backwell that we can go to when the weather is a
> bit better, with a fire pit and hut, which we cleared recently. We could
> do outings to Willsbridge Mill, Goblin Coombe (near Backwell), East
> Rocks Woodland near Bath etc later on.
> 
> The structure suggested might look like this:
> 
> 4pm - Game - 5 mins game while everyone arrives
> 4.05pm - Snack
> 4.10pm - News circle
> 4.20pm - Main Activity
> 4.40pm - Game
> 4.50pm - Short story followed by a song
> 4.55pm close
> 
> We can also get outside people to come in and talk about things like
> maybe bee-keeping, gardening / growing or something! I think some of the
> immediate issues will be balancing ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ energy within a
> session, establishing some rules which we can work on as a group,
> forming a structure that works for everyone (eg snacks first or in the
> middle, songs and stories at the end) etc.
> 
> Woodies do have a uniform you can buy but I thought it might be fun to
> tie die some T-shirts (maybe even organic cotton ones from Better Food
> Company) in a colour we all decide upon, they could sew or draw or paint
> things on it too - thoughts please (including an absolute no to any kind
> of uniform!). You can do badgework but I think we’d leave that for a while.
> 
> I have a Scrapstore card and also a card for Bwerani, the multi-cultural
> toy library.
> 
> Any thoughts on any of this please let me know! Also any thoughts on how
> we might be able to encourage people from all social and ethnic groups
> in the course of time so that it doesn’t end up white and middle class!

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.

Woodcraft Folk is a unique progressive educational movement for children and young people – both girls and boys - designed to develop self-confidence and activity in society, with the aim of building a world based on equality, peace, social justice and co-operation.

Through its activities, Woodcraft Folk tries to give its members an understanding of important issues such as the environment, world debt and global conflict, with a key focus in recent years being sustainable development. The name ‘woodcraft’ was used by the influential writer and naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton at the turn of the twentieth century, meaning the skill of living in the open air, close to nature.

Woodcraft Folk groups meet weekly, enjoying a varied programme including games, drama, discussion, projects, crafts, stories, sing

About us:

• We are co-operative and democratic. We encourage children and young people to work together to share their skills and enthusiasm.

• We believe in equal opportunities and access for all members. This means being able to discuss and challenge discrimination.

• We are open to people of any religion or none.

• We empower young people to make decisions themselves and to take an active part in the world about them.

• We are dedicated to the building of a more peaceful future.

• We promote an understanding of the need to protect our environment and the use of the world’s resources.

• We run exchanges with similar organisations throughout the world. Our international links help us to span the world with friendship.

www.woodcraftfolk.org and http://northbristolwoodchips.wordpress.com

Welcome to Woodchips! We’ll be starting this group after Christmas - for girls and boys of 4-6 years in the Quaker Meeting House in Horfield on a Tuesday afternoon from 4pm-5pm. It’s about stories, crafts, nature, music, it’ll be fun and a great place to make good friends…