Riding on a tiger...Buxton Wild Weeks, 2023

Riding on a tiger
Peak Dale Primary School
Creeping Toad and Buxton Wild Weeks, 2023

This summer, I am working with Buxton Wild Weeks who set out to "bring full weeks of nature-focussed activities to Buxton schools". There are wider community centred activities as well and like the school included in this report, schools that are coming in for a taster day or two this year and hopefully a deeper relationship in the future. To find out more, it's probably easiest to follow BWW on their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/buxtonwildweeks

But me? I'm a storyteller, artist and provoker of imaginations so in our day at Peak Dale Primary School, we tended to get carried away

A WALK IN THE WOODS

If we went for a walk in the woods,

We'd like to find

A fox to stroke,

A squirrel climbing a tree,

A rabbit hopping,

Bumblebees buzzing,

Beautiful flowers with bright butterflies

If we went for a walk in the woods,

We'd like to find

A dancing monkey clinging to a branch,

A werewolf at midnight,

Sharks in a stream.

If we went for a walk in the woods,

We/d like to come back,

Riding on a tiger.

With other classes, we were perhaps focussed more locally, but we did wander a bit....

EAGLE

Eyes of yellow

And

Grasping claws

Let nothing escape,

Ever.

We were experimenting with ways of drawings and colouring, enjoying working with stabilo and water colour pencils...

smudging colours with a damp finger

using a sharpie for finishing touches

We played with riddles and thoughtful moments.

FOX

Fire furred,

On silent feet,

yellow eyed,

Rabbit killer

FROG

On a sunny day,

The pond leaper with a sticky tongue

And grass green skin,

Watches the world

Through black and gold eyes,

And remembers when he was a tadpole,

And the world was wet and cold.

I really like this Grasshopper acrostic

GRASSHOPPER

Grass green,

Racing and jumping,

Away from danger to the

Safety of

Shadows under leaves, where

Happy hoppers,

Only in summer can have

Parties away from 

Parrots and

Every other danger from

Rain to

Snow.

And then there are always ...

MICE

With long tails and twitching whiskers,

Nibbling teeth and sharp claws,

Mice are the world's best,

Thieves of cheese

Some drawings told stories all in themselves...we had two stoats who found each other by following footprints (right across the class) and, old friends, were reunited 

And then there are the hedgehogs....

With many thanks to all the Buxton Wild Weeks Team and to all the staff, artists and poets of Peakdale Primary School