A tree house the colour of sunset
After the popularity of the work bench in the Atelier I was reflecting on how we could keep developing our skills with the tools and make a collaborative project. I also wanted to take the work bench outside. Over the next few sessions we have some different tools,…
Experiments with animation
I’ve been mulling over in my mind whether I should write a ‘how to’ for making simple animations. This is mostly because I am still learning and trying things out myself, but, it is so exciting I just have to tell you where I have got to so far. I first tried to do an…
If I had a hammer….
So far this week we have only had to down tools to deal with an injury twice. Once for a very small cut that needed a plaster and once for a finger, that got hit with a hammer slightly harder than all the other times we hit our fingers and thumbs with a hammer. Not a…
I get to go indoors!!!
Being known as ‘Lily who plays out for a living’ has some drawbacks…..erm…. I’ll tell you what they are when I think of them… Excitingly, this winter, I will also be playing indoors too! A wonderful school has invited me into their foundation stage be their…
Follow a trail through the woods
I remember back to when I first started working with children, and I remember distinctly the first group of children I ever took into the woods. We followed a trail that was marked with posts and signs and the children loved running from one signpost to another,…
How does it feel to jump over the jaws of a crocodile?
Kindling delivered a training day with a wonderful enthusiastic group of Early Years practitioners on Monday. To end the session we talked about how being outdoors makes us feel. We had been in the woods for most of the day and I asked them, based on the emotions and…
A map to find the fairie’s houses
If you were given a map like this one, you would have to check it out, wouldn’t you? I was given this map yesterday and followed it to a special place in the woods: And there, in the woods, I found all the fairie’s houses. Generations of them, some with little notes…
Play is like breathing
I have searched the whole internet to see if this has been posted anywhere else and it hasn’t. It isn’t mine, I can claim nothing but having found this a few years back and saved it. I would love to credit “Jacky” so if that’s you, or you know who it is then give me a…
Shrunken apple heads
In my early twenties I used to go to Oxford once a fortnight and my treat was to go to the Pitt Rivers museum of anthropology. I was always fascinated by the shrunken heads from the Amazon Basin. When I found a how to in an old craft book I had to have a try. That was…
Springboards
I have been thinking a lot about springboards this week. Not the swimming pool ones, but a playwork theory that was first described to me by Martin Maudesley; sometimes even if we want to stimulate free play for children, or encourage self directed learning we need to…
Building Bridges
Rope Bridges These last few months have seen an increase in the number of rope bridges I have been making with Forest School groups. It is interesting to notice how each group takes the same basic springboard and has their way of using it. With the younger nursery age…
Dancing Leaves
This is what happens when I get trapped in the house on a rainy Sunday. I’m putting together a howto soon, but first I am going to do some more with the kids in the woods next week.
