Not yet Drumming

With the front now added to the winter shelter and the flap door, we are safe from the rain unless you are me and you have to sit under the chimney!  With the rain coming down we crowded under cover to carry on working on our drums.  We are learning to sew and this is throwing up lots of problems which the group are learning to solve.  One of the problems is threading the needle this is good for developing those fine motor skills and then learning that pulling too hard on the needle means you need to rethread it as you leave the cotton behind.

With the rain stopping we hung the drums in the roof of the shelter and we went out to play in the FS area.  Dens have been the big thing this term with a group of the children adding more and more to their den.  This week they added a wooden floor using some pieces of plank left over from the Campfire event held at the school a couple of weeks ago.  Another group were working on their fallen wood den; this group then divided and the break away group went on to build yet another den.  By the end of the session we had three dens all completely different.  It is good to see the problem solving that goes on during these building projects, it’s not just about how the den is put together but also social problem solving as the group learns to communicate their ideas.  Along with the den building a couple of the children started to build a sculpture using sticks and string aiming to get it as high as they could.

We finished the session with hot dogs followed by hot chocolate around the fire we discussed next term and we are going to start off with a bonfire with marshmallows and as it is going to be just after Bonfire night we may even have some sparklers.  

It rain we stayed dry

This morning the rain came in and stayed all day lucky the shelter is just about finished and I added two extra panels to the back but there is talk of needing a door.  How do you fit a door to a triangle opening? - answers on a postcard please! 

So we all squeezed into the shelter and started adding the skins to our drums that we started last week.  Unfortunately the cord we were using is too thick to pull through the skins.  The drum skins were decorated and next week we will sow them to the frames with thinner cord.   One of the boy experimented with tying the skin to the frame but found it kept slipping off.

In the middle of the shelter we have a small fire surround so that we can boil a storm kettle which takes no time at all.  While I prepared the kettle the group sat around and told stories some silly, some funny, some scary and some very short.  We were even treated to some singing of sea shanties from some of the children from Beech along with a little bit of Queen ‘We will rock you’.

With cups cleared away we started our next musical instrument, part drum part shaker.  The body of the shaker is made from an old hot chocolate tub with a picture drawn on sailcloth on the inside.  The children then went off to find things to fill their shakers with.  To hold the contents inside we added a skin of rip stop nylon held in place with elastic bands.  With a found stick to drum it with, we sounded very musical.  

Tell us a story

This morning the rain came in and stayed all day, luckily the shelter is just about finished and I added two extra panels to the back but there is talk of needing a door.  How do you fit a door to a triangular opening? - Answers on a postcard please! 

So we all squeezed into the shelter and started adding the skins to our drums that we started last week.  Unfortunately the cord we were using is too thick to pull through the skins.  The drum skins were decorated and next week we will sow them to the frames with thinner cord.   One of the boy experimented with tying the skin to the frame but found it kept slipping off.

In the middle of the shelter we have a small fire surround so that we can boil a storm kettle, which takes no time at all.  While I prepared the kettle the group sat around and told stories some silly, some funny, some scary and some very short.  We were even treated to some singing of sea shanties from some of the children from Beech along with a little bit of Queen ‘We will rock you’.

With cups cleared away we started our next musical instrument, part drum part shaker.  The body of the shaker is made from an old hot chocolate tub with a picture drawn on sailcloth on the inside.  The children then went off to find things to fill their shakers with.  To hold the contents inside we added a skin of rip stop nylon held in place with elastic bands.  With a found stick to drum it with, we sounded very musical

A warning from the Gods it’s time to get the den weather tight

Well we just missed the rain mainly due to some slow getting ready to go out today.  Once out we had two big bags of wood collected for a campfire event on Saturday to put away in the wood store (hoping there will be wood left over for us).  The group start off working individually but as they got into the task they started to develop ways of working together by passing the wood along a line from bag to store.  Helen managed to get some dry wood from the store before the new damp stuff went in so there was a fire and hot chocolate later in the session.

We continued on the wet weather den adding sides and log seat and an area where we can boil the storm kettle.  It is beginning to look quite snug we do need to add a few more pieces of tarp to make it really watertight.  The group are thinking of ways to decorate the inside so this will probably become a wet session project.

We have two play dens on the go at the moment one being built by manly year twos and is free standing made from fallen branches.  The other is being built by manly year threes in the group and is in the hedge.  It is really quite interesting to see how the two dens differ, the hedge den has a swept floor and furniture and has a real narrative about it and the game is about how they use the den.  The free standing den is all about the construction and how it fits together and the play seems to be in the building.

Along with the den building some of the children are making drums loosely based on Sami shallow drums.  Instead of birch wood steamed and bent into a circle the children harvested willow and wove it into rings.  Next week the will stretch fabric over the rings and sew it into place and then decorate them.  We may turn our hands to making some shakers too.