Troll pizza and elephant trees: training courses in July

Pizza for trolls and elephants in the trees

From young children to adventures everywhere: 

training courses with Wildwise

Devon, 17th and 18th July 2019 

small things hold big stories

This summer I am doing two days of training with Wildwise in Devon. These are two stand alone days – come for either or both

Workshops like this are aimed at teachers, outdoor ed practitioners, forest school leaders, playworkers…anyone really who is interested in adding some (hopefully) new activities to their toolkit. I run training courses thata re cheerful, relaxed and full of variety, exploring dieas, playing with a ctivities, offering people ready-made activities to take away while offering time for people to then stop and think, turn thigns inside out, add their own ideas and experiences and come up with ideas that suit themselves

Wildwise are based at Dartington in Totnes so we work in the lovely woods of the Dartington Estate. Booking notes with each course description and at the end of the page - contact me (creepingtoad@btinternet.com) about content but talk to Wildwise about bookings!

Wednesday July 17th

house, trap, adventure point?

Stories everywhere: a day about finding stories in the world around us, improvising adventures and creating instant poems

A day to enjoy words, this workshop encourages participants to find “adventures everywhere” anywhere. It will offer activities designed to draw inspiration from simple observation, fostering confidence in participants own skills and encouraging innovation within supportive activity structures. The activities used will also allow ideas to merge as a number of short activities flow together to give longer more intricate adventures. 
The activities used here have been tried and tested with family groups, on adult events and with school children - often in situations where Literacy is an issue and activities are needed that remove worry and fear and encourage simple enjoyment of words
Programme will include:

• first words: setting out on an adventure
• adventures everywhere: short activities with minimal equipment for use outside
• holding onto adventures: ways of recording our words
• bigger stories: working in groups to make quick, longer pieces

Activity options:

• developing story characters
• deriving adventures from found objects or artefacts
• the value of treasure
• story bundles and adventure boxes

Booking for this course: £80 (individual adult), £95 (community/not-for-profit), £120 (sponsored adult/business adult). if booked through eventbrite their fees apply. For more information contact Wildwise

strong characters make all the difference

Thursday July 18^th

Adventures with Early Years: a day of activities to use with younger groups arounds tory making and wider literacy and turning words into play

who knows who waits in the woods?

Build your own toolkit of activities and themes to use with younger children. Looking at a world full of stories, we can use immediate environment to inspire language, encourage communication and foster a deep sense of excitement in and connection with that world. We might shape a story on the walk to school, design a pizza for a troll, discover who hides on the other side of the tree and how to call a dragon from a flowerbed. Using readily transferable techniques and easily sourced materials, this workshop will encourage us to value and cherish the creativity of younger children

Who is the course for

Early Years teachers, Forest School practitioners, family centre and playgroup leaders, environmental education and countryside staff

What will you take away

• ways of building storylines with young children that help us shape their experience and learning
• activities that combine visual art, stories and the environment
• activities to encourage creative exploration
• event ideas for family groups
• direct experience of a range of activity ideas from outside storybuilding to rainy day alternatives, mixing discovery with story, drama, art and craft ideas
•   the value of tiny things and the power of giants

Booking for this course: £80 (individual adult), £95 (community/not-for-profit), £120 (sponsored adult/business adult). if booked through eventbrite their fees apply. For more information contact Wildwise            

 HOW TO BOOK
1. Email Wildwise here: please provide your contact details and how you would like to pay i.e. BACS or card
2. By phone: call 01803 868269 (message service when office unattended)
3. Online booking via Eventbrite: instant booking with immediate confirmation (recommended for late bookings). Eventbrite booking fees apply.

tell a tale along a twisting branch

worksheets for stories with young children

Stories Alive! the worksheets

Ideas for creating adventurous stories, songs, poems, palaces and sacks!

a storyworld taking shape

Over 2015, Stories Alive! placed 5 artists in 5 Nursery Schools (see below) in and around Burnley in East Lancashire. Our teams have been challenged to develop sets of activities to help embed storytelling and storymaking in Nursery practice, in families and in the children we are all working with. There have been storyhouses built, storysacks made, stories mapped, little adventures, big adventures, whole storyworlds of adventure. 

a storyhouse

Out of all the Stories Alive! workshops and twilight sessions, we have grown a spreading collection of activities to use with young children. Some of our activities needed lots of bits (but rarely very specialised), others just needed people, some plastic plates and a few minutes. We have drawn activities together, distilling them into a set of worksheets which are now available (free of charge) for downloading (please go to this page on my website to find the download).

We offer these activities to anyone who is interested. Please feel free to use them – but if you want to post them somewhere else please acknowledge Stories Alive! as a source. This website could be included as an information point about the project and my email used as a first contact (I can always refer enquiries on to a more relevant person).

The activities are not final. In many ways these are our working notes. We have tried to avoid repetition but at times there are overlaps between activities. We kept them all in, knowing that different people suit different styles: so please sift, choose and experiment. We hope you will have as much fun as we did – or even more.

If you do download a set of worksheets, it would be good to hear from you – even just to say who you are and where you hope to be making up stories with young children…

a plastic plate adventure

Adventure booklet: we have also produced a little booklet designed for use by families to create their own adventure. This uses some of the worksheet activities but aims to keep everything very straightforward so a slightly harassed parent with some over-excited children in the local park could all work together to create their own adventures.

There will a few extra hard copies of this available (summer 2016) – if you would like a copy let me know and I’ll see what we can do. A downloadable version might go on here shortly

Nursery schools involved

Taywood 

Newtown

Rockwood

Basnett Street

Rosegrove 

Artists involved

ARTISTS

Carol Ferro

Hannah Stringer

Kerris Casey St Pierre of Spiral Designs

Ben McCabe

Gordon MacLellan - Creeping Toad - me!

Wandering houses and Titania’s troubles

Wandering houses and Titania’s troubles

Fallibroome Arts Week, 2016

The mountains of Ancient Greece

a temple from Ancient Greece

 A week of slightly deranged creativity draws to a cheerful close. These last 5 days have bounced me from Leek to Blackshaw Moor to Nether Alderley, Prestbury and Whirley. This could simply be a collection of delightful names if the names weren’t also accompanied by some delightful people

The majority of workshops were part of the magnificent Fallibroome Academy’s Arts Week where they coordinate arts input, trips and performances among the Academy’s feeder primaries where teachers take workshops to each other schools, classes go on trips to art galleries and the likes of me come into school and disturb the equilibrium a bit….

 

retelling myths

This has been my third year as part of Arts Week and I love it! I meet wildly enthusiastic children in friendly schools where people just dive in and have a go at whatever gets thrown at them…..

In Nether Alderley, we met Victorian explorers and the people, buildings and myths of Ancient Greece

The Storm.

Clouds in the sky,

Rain is coming.

Tip, tap,

Raindrops going tip, tip tap.

People in the puddles go splish, splash, splosh

While the thunder bangs and lightning crashes

With bobble hats and boots

Or no hats, no shoes, no long trousers, only shorts

We go out in the rain and the rain goes splash

And the wind goes whoosh

A storm strong enough to blow us away!

Running home,

Running home

Wet footprints in the hall

(Whirley Primary School, Reception)

At Whirley Primary School, we also discovered the scenes that Shakespeare missed out of Midsummer Night’s Dream

 

he forgot the angry trees

...and the dramatic castles

...he didn't tell us that Demetrius was carrying a ring

 And today in Prestbury Primary’s Reception classes, we heard of adventures….

 

brave nights cross a bridge over a river

There was the house that needed a pee, so it stood up and went for a walk. Eventually it found a swimming pool and relieved itself but having tasted freedom, the house didn’t want to go back to its own place in the  street and wandered off exploring. It found a cave and squeezed inside looking for treasure. But the cave was the home of a lion who, alarmed by the arrival of a whole house, roared! The house was so frightened that it ran all the way home and jumped into its space in the street. But it was in a such a hurry that it landed the wrong way round with its back door where the front door should be*. If you walk through Prestbury now, you might find the back-to-front house and then you will know it is the house that went for a walk

an adventure storyboard

 

an adventure following a path through a wood and flowers

Or there was the pirate who lived in a tall, beautiful house that had no kitchen, So he went off hunting for a kitchen. He looked in the wood of blue and yellow trees: no kitchens here. He looked under the bridge where the trolls lived: no kitchens here. He went into outer space on Alexander’s Flying Boat. They few to the Dark and Dangerous Planet: no kitchens here. They went to Saturn: no kitchens here! Coming back to Earth, the pirate went into a shop in Macclesfield: kitchens! Kitchens! Being a pirate he tried to steal a kitchen but it was too big to carry. So he went home and dug up some of the treasure he had hidden under his bed and went back and paid for a kitchen. Now he is a happy pirate

 Many thanks to the artists and storytellers of Nether Alderley, 

Whirley and Prestbury Primary Schools

* It is just possible that the house ended up upside down, “like that house in London”.

 

Midsummer Night's Dream: the Fairy Woodland

Workshop: Adventures with early years

 Working with younger children?

a training course

Thursday 5th November,

Wildwise, Devon

Who shall we send on our adventure?

Where shall we go?

What shall we find?

Who shall we meet?

The questions that spark stories, that have little fingers finding little treasures, that send us creeping through the bushes, building tiny houses out of twigs, telling stories. Telling stories: stretching language, finding new words, discovering descriptions through movement, through holding and handling, through being in the middle of our own adventure

Great ideas to further the excitement and opportunities for the children*

Do you work with younger children? I have another training course coming up in November aimed at creating these storytelling and art adventures with young groups. 

If you are interested in joining us, you are welcome to talk to me about the content and details but to book and discuss money you need to talk to the organizers, Wildwise

Workshops like these are aimed at teachers, countryside rangers, environmental educators, youth group leaders….

Confidence in working with stories and making them! Inspiration for activities to use at home and work. Ideas to carry forward to others

During a workshop, we will aim to

            explore ideas

            try out (hopefully) new or different ways of connecting people to the natural world

            experiment with materials and techniques

            give you time to think and plan for your own situation

            meet fellow professionals

            remind youself that working with people and nature is fun, and rewarding!

LOADS! My head is buzzing with ideas that will encourage all ages and abilities to engage in writing starting from the outdoor environment. Great way to get children outside without an excuse

Outdoor Adventures with Younger Children

Thursday 5th November: activities for creative times with younger children - from instant characters to take adventuring to finding treasures, making up stories, looking for secrets…for Wildwise in Devon

9.30 am - 4.30 pm

on the Dartington Estate

£115 / £95 / £70*

 Build your own toolkit of activities and themes to use with younger children. Looking at the world around us as a treasure-trove of stories, to inspire language, encourage communication and foster a deep sense of excitement. Discover the best pizza for a troll, and how to call a dragon from a flowerbed! Using readily transferable techniques and easily sourced materials, this workshop will encourage us to value and cherish the creativity of younger children.

(I feel I should point out that I am an environmental educator, artist and storyteller - not a bushcraft worker so we'll be happily muddied into art, story and leaves rather than bush-crafter stuff! There are lots of other workshops you can go to for this - look at the rest of the Wildwise programme for a start!)

* rates for business/voluntary-charitable organisations/individuals

Bookings: contact Wildwise.

Wildwise office 01803 868269 / 07919 093784

WildWise Events
Dartington Space
Dartington Hall
Totnes
TQ9 6EN

* the quotes are from participants at my October workshops for the Outrageous Nature Company

New workshops for winter 2015

 

Winter tales and Spring stories

activities in school with Creeping Toad

December 2015 - April 2016

marking the changing edge of the year, here are old stories, new adventures, art, history and wildlife to inspire your classes

this year we might meet….

•  storytelling, and storymaking, treasures, plots, landscapes and thrills
•   puppets, lanterns, shadows and pop-ups
•  trees, leaves, nuts and fruit
•  animals in winter, waking into spring
• ancient lives, distant land

With stories running from the frozen edges of the world right through to the first flowers of spring and the waking of the bumblebees, here are stories and activities to enchant and inspire.

I am planning and promoting workshops for the winter and spring ahead. Here are ideas, suggestions and throw -away thoughts: all of these are here as starting points. If you are interested in a session in school - or some other place - your youth group perhaps? or as a public event in a library, museum, country park or dungeon, get int ouch! let's have a chat! Let's plan something wild and wonderful!

A day of activity might include:

~ storytelling performances: lasting up to 60 minutes for up to 90 children at a time

~ stories out of anything! usually we might do this outside but given wintry weather, we'll use leaves and pine cones, twigs and stones and shells indoors to inspire words, create poems and shape a set of stories never told before (allow 60 minutes for a class session)

~ story and book workshops: taking a bit longer (allow 90 minutes for a class) as well as discovering those stories no-one has ever heard before, now we will build those into the books that no-one has ever read before and leave the classroom with a library no-one has ever visited before!

 ~ pop-up storyscapes: allow an hour for a class: gathering ideas, images and words we’ll make quick 3-d landscapes holding the essence of a story or the thrills of a lifecycle in a setting, with characters and the words that set the adventure running

~ Winter lights: finding words and images to hold the essence of winter or the hopes of spring in quick poems, we'll slide words  and pictures into lanterns and make a swarm of small glowing lanterns to glow through the darkest nights or gloomiest days

~ shadow stories: out of my stories might come new stories: drawing on whatever theme we are working with to create quick performances of shadow puppets. Incorporating silhouettes, translucence and transparency, we'll mix science with story to create an (almost) instant set of story performances to show or perhaps to film

~ Ancient Lives and other lands: add a voice from the distant past to your history topics with stories that our Stone Age ancestors might have listened to. Stories. models, artefacts and drawings can feed into art inspired by cave paintings, carvings and jewellery. Similar inspiration runs through collections of African, Rain Forest and Native American material

~ Animals in winter - getting to know your local wildlife from stories to listen to, to models to make, life-cycles, food, homes and habitats

~ Trees? Just how well do you know your trees? Help your class become Tree Detectives and identify local trees through leaves, seeds and twigs. Find out about animal life in different trees and meet some of the old stories that have grown alongside our oak, ash, holly and birch

~ Working with younger children: special sessions for early years where we might listen to stories, invent new stories, find adventures in gardens, make puppet characters to send on quests…enjoy playing with words…

~ your own themes and ideas: or are you exploring a particular theme that you would like to involve some stories in? pirates….tropical islands….ancient Greeks…the wonder of fossils and rocks…..where in our school would bears live?…a shadow puppet quidditch match and the Great Fire of London  have all featured in recent Creeping Toad projects

Charges: £250 a day: includes storyteller’s fee, travel and materials. Can be paid on the day or I can invoice you. Activities can be adapted to suit groups from KS 1, 2 or 3

For further information:

visit the Creeping Toad website at Creeping Toad

(www.creepingtoad.com) or the blog at creepingtoad.blogspot.co.uk

To book: contact Gordon directly at

creepingtoad@btinternet.com

or by telephone:

landline: 01298 77964

mobile: 07791 096857

you never know who - or what - 

will end up in a Creeping Toad story!

inspired cave drawing