As I do cubs I'm involved in the planning of the meetings and I had an alternative cordage evening down using our rope machines. We had a paucity of leaders on the night and I decided to try an 'easier' evening which didn't need as many hands.
I remembered seeing a picture, probably on social media, of a leave that had had a heart shape cut out of the middle and decided to try some test leaves in some string to see how it worked out, and then use this as the basis to make some garlands using butchers string, scissors and Blu Tack...Easy!
I collected several different leaf varieties and hatched a plan of how to beef up the meeting rather than just saying 'Here you go, get on with it'. All the leaf varieties that I had collected had a use such as cherries for their fruit and scented wood, Hornbeam for it's wood, Sycamore for it's seeds and wood, Hazel for it's nuts and Oak for it's acorns and wood amongst others so I thought a loosely based bushcraft Harvest Festival theme was in order.
Harvest Festival has it's roots in Pagan culture (based near the harvest moon closest to the equinox) so rather than do the school version which is along the lines of fruit and veg on a table type thing I went through folk needing to know what was usable in the woods just to survive, so I cut an acorn in an Oak leaf, flames in a Hornbeam leaf and so on. I then explained that people wood collect the Acorns and process them, and the firewood to keep warm and so on. I did have to go off at a tangent to explain what the equinox was.
And so we let the cubs loose with the brief to try and make any images vaguely Harvest Festival. They were a bit hit and miss inserting the stalks into the string which was done by twisting the string until it opened, inserting the stalk and then turning it back the other way to lock them in place.
For a last minute idea I was rather pleased to find that as a whole the cubs engaged, even though spacing the cut leaves wasn't their forte.
No comments:
Post a Comment