Umbrella frogs and wartrees

Art, stories and creativity

exploring stories through art 

Chapel-en-le-Frith Primary School

June 2017

a walk through a work-in-progress tin forest

We travelled this week from Chapel to Africa and beyond. We walked on beaches, rescuing dolphins. We helped lonely beasts find new friends. We slipped over the edges of the world to where the Wild Things are and explored the seas of strange imaginations among Tin Forests and Lost Things.

We took some books and unfolded them, sliding in betwen the pages, expanding ideas, letting inspiration ricochet off ourselves and each other
I’m not going to do a detailed breakdown of what we did with ac class and sessions were so hectic I didn’t get all that many photos but what did gow out of it allw ere some wodnerfully tasty words, so I’ll share those

Books:

• The Greedy Zebra (we made animal models)
• Handa’s Surprise (animal masks)
• The Lost Thing (narrative poems)
• The Tin Forest (shadow puppets and a tabletop forest)
• The Lonely Beast (puppets)
• Dolphin Boy (drama, puppets)

shadow puppet tree for a wild thing

Where are the Wild Things now?
1. Across a hot and sandy desert,
Over a long, rotten wooden bridge
Past the horrible green trees
In the dark, scary woodland where the tiger owls growl,
There is a cave,
beneath a mountain where the grizzly bear snores

2. Through space and time,
Through the magical bond between the past and future,
Between the power of infinity and space and time,
Through the crystal cave where a green dragon guards a treasure of gold and diamonds and rubies and on beautiful golden horse,
There the wild things are watching through the horse’s sparkling legs.

wild thing princess

The Lost Thing
Where do you go to find a lost thing?

Through the bluebell woods,
Past the spooky houses,
Behind the Blue John Cavern ,
And over the creepy bridge…
Dangerous rocks will come tumbling down.
Dark crystals glitter,
Under steep cliffs
Where roses grow,
Roses as blue as the darkest sea.

There is an abandoned warehouse there,
Haunted,
Broken glass catching the light
Cries echoing through the cracked windows,
Lights flicker,
Shadows move.
There!

Venom leaker,
Baby carrier,
Creepy crawler,
Glass staining,
Mysterious object
Someone’s.
Someone else’s,
Lost Thing.

In a Tin Forest there are egg and bacon trees with frying pan birds and spatula squirrels whose flat tails can flip the fruit off a tree in no time. Umbrella trees and lollipop trees, that grow in a shimmer of pipes and tubes. There is a bicycle tree whose wheels turn gently in the breeze and a frying pan tree catching food from the air.

Other sifters of the breeze include the scavenger trees, netting trophies from the storm winds: a shopping trolley, a ladder, a wheel, a bike chain and a crutch. A rubber glove tree grows nail varnish bottles as fruit.

Umbrella frogs open their wide mouths as they hang from the branches of a trees. They catch food on their long hooked tongues and then snap their folding mouths shut around their prey.

A Rollercoaster Tree sprouts spring swings while a Wartree grows spearhead leaves but when it is cut in its turn it will bleed, rusting slowly into dust.

with many thanks to all the staff and young artists 

of Chapel-en-le-Frith Primary School