A tree house the colour of sunset

After the popularity of the work bench in the Atelier I was reflecting on how we could keep developing our skills with the tools and make a collaborative project. I also wanted to take the work bench outside. 

Over the next few sessions we have some different tools, like drills and different size nails and pieces of wood.  We also have different things to hammer into, like corks and conkers.

We talk about what we are making and I ask what we could make outdoors if we had big pieces of wood. Maraaya says “a cat” Jonah says “an aeroplane” Frank says “a tree house”

I can see a tree house being a project that would interest lots of the children and would offer play value during and after the project.

I ask what we would need to build a tree house. “Lots of wood” says William.

It just so happened that I spotted a pallet on the top of a skip not far from the school. I was raised in the noble art of skip diving from a very early age. As children we used to go out with a shopping trolley collecting wood to build chicken houses for our 'poultry farm'.

The pallet caused lots of excitement and we dragged it into the wild area at the top of the play area.    

“It is like a ladder” says Jacob. With the pallet resting on the tree they can climb up it to get to the tree. “It isn't a tree house though” says Frank.

“Well lets make it into one then.....” 

We hammer nails into the pallet,

We saw it......

We drill holes into it

And we prise open the cracks with a screwdriver

Dylan finds that he can attach elastic bands around the nails that he is hammering in. William points out that Dylan is hammering the nails in patterns. He passes the nails to Dylan. 

The next day I bring a second pallet and we start with the tools on that one too. Hammering it, sawing it, drilling it and prising the cracks open with the screwdrivers.We have worked really hard, but in terms of output we now have two pallets with small cuts, nail patterns drilled holes and some loose planks. The pallets work really well as workbenches, they are really stable, children can work all the way around and on top of them without needing help with clamps or stabilising their wood.

We talk a lot about what the treehouse will look like. “It should be painted with rainbows and teddy bears” says Frank. He runs off and comes back with red paint. Georgia fetches yellow paint. There is a lot of paint. 

Some of it covers them, their waterproofs and three or four people have arms that are entirely painted red. Our pallets are looking beautiful.
Oscar looks up into the tree, concerned about how safe it will be. "It will be very wobbly" he says.
"Then we could tie it in to the tree" says Frank,
"We only have the very thin string in the making area" Oscar points out
"We could make it more like a Wendy house" says Frank.

I am at this point a little relieved. I had been following their suggestions right up to this point, they brought the ladders over to check all the trees and declared them safe. But the size of the trees wouldn't really support a platform at a low level and building it higher up the tree would mean a higher level of supervision than the setting could manage on a long term basis. Which means that whatever we made would have to be very temporary. Frank is going to do some drawings to show us how it will look, and I have too. Whichever way our construction takes us next week it is shaping up to be an excellent tree house (on the ground).

Oscar looks closely at the painted pallets. “They are the colour of sunsets”

Experiments with animation

I’ve been mulling over in my mind whether I should write a ‘how to’  for making simple animations. This is mostly because I am still learning and trying things out myself, but, it is so exciting I just have to tell you where I have got to so far.

I first tried to do an animation some years back using my niece’s and goddaughter toys. These were kind of successful, in that things moved and I recorded it but they were really clunky and the only programme I had to work with was power point which wasn't so easy to use.

Then I noticed I had something on my computer called Windows Movie Maker  (WMM)and with a group of 8 and 9 year olds we did an animation of a giant seed growing, which worked out alright but there were a few things I would change. (sadly I can’t put it on here because I don’t have photo permissions for those children)

The first thing I learnt is it is much quicker if you change the length of each slide before you add all the photos rather than altering them individually. On WMM this is pretty easy to do (see below) but it took me ages to find it. (Under tools > options)

One rainy Sunday I got a pile of autumn leaves and tried again.

If you look in the corners you can see where I marked how the camera lined up. This is to make sure what I was doing with the leaves didn’t go out of the frame. I also found that using a tripod and remote shutter release meant I didn’t have to get up and go back to the camera all the time.

Once you have a big pile of photos all in sequence they can be imported from the camera onto the computer and from the computer into the programme. These can then be added to the timeline in order. With these pebbles, which were part of an animation I did with some 3 to 5 year olds they made shapes and patterns on the table first and then we took the pictures as they moved them around and took them away.  This sequence can then be reversed to make it look like it is starting from a blank screen and filling up.

You can stretch some pictures so they last longer, add transitions, like a fade transition which blends each picture smoothly into the next. I keep playing it back over and over to see if it is working. 

Once I have the basics together it gives me a feel of the rhythm. This helps me choose the music. I did an animation with some more 3-5 year olds last week of some skeletons they had made. I kept watching it and wondering why it didn’t come together. Then we found the right music and the whole thing was transformed. I’ll add it here when I have permissions to use the children’s photographs as they feature in it doing a wonderful dance, with a skeleton. The music is imported into the programme and added to it's own line. The spikes of the rhythm help line up with  the action.

Once all the elements are in place you can add titles and credits. All of the tools needed for this are on WMM, I just kept trying all the different tabs to see what they did.

Then the animation can be published to be played back on your computer, and uploaded to a video sharing site like youtube.

There are some useful articles here : http://www.stopmotionanimation.com/handbook/ that should help you if you want to take it even further. The things I found most helpful were

·         Fixed point of view, using a tripod

·         Remote shutter release meant the children could take the pictures without knocking the camera

·         Keep the moving elements simple
·         Lots of trial and error
·         You can double the length of your animation by adding the photos in sequence going one way then pause and reverse the order to go back to the first photo again

If I had a hammer....

So far this week we have only had to down tools to deal with an injury twice. Once for a very small cut that needed a plaster and once for a finger, that got hit with a hammer slightly harder than all the other times we hit our fingers and thumbs with a hammer.Not a bad record from almost two full days of hammering and sawing by a group of children aged between three and five.

This week I have started a project working in an atelier, or studio, based in a Foundation stage of a large school. The Foundation stage is inspired by Reggio Emilia and the Atelier is kitted out with plenty of creative resources. I didn’t quite know how this was going to start this week. I knew the staff and some of the children from a Forest School project in the spring but I noticed how wary many of the children were of a stranger in their nursery and reception.

Leaf rubbing isn't novel, but was still amazing

 enough for a child who had never 

seen it done before to say “Woah! That’s sick!”

 I felt that it would be hard to work from a child led point of view until I got to know the children and they got to know me and that lots of exciting projects wouldn't develop until this relationship developed. The first morning I caught up with a few old friends and we drew and made leaf rubbings as we chatted about our memories of going to the woods. In  particular the children remembered cooking popcorn over a fire during the last session. It was exciting to hear the memories of a boy who previously chose not to speak in nursery and gradually, as he gained confidence and enthusiasm during the Forest School project chose to talk to us in the woods and then in back in the setting. Now, he chatted away about the things he remembered and introduced me to his friends.

We made lots of full size self portraits drawing round their bodies, and the art works spread out all over the floor and round the corner. It was a great way to spend a little time one to one with lots of the children.

The second morning I put a tray of pebbles on the table along with some pictures of stacks of pebbles. I am keen to do some more animation so I set up the camera with a remote shutter to record the pebbles as the children moved them around.  It was as this was coming to a natural end that someone took notice of the work bench that is in the atelier and that, is when the sawing and hammering started.

There is room round the bench for six people to work at any one time. For all the rest of the day these places were constantly occupied.  It was mostly the older children and the more confident ones who chose to come and work with the saws and hammers, some coming back a number of times throughout the day. We had to develop a system for queuing, with a list for who was next in line for a space round the table. So for most of the day we were busily engaged. The children’s persistence and patience was incredible. Even during the course of a day I saw their hand eye co-ordination improve.  

On the next day I started out working with a group, helping them extend a provocation about skeletons that they started some weeks ago. We brought the skeletons into the atelier and did some animations with the bones. The children loved passing the remote shutter release button around to take the photos without  moving the camera which was mounted on a tripoid. Again as this was ending a child came over and said “Lily, I would really like to finish my sawing.  Please can you get me a saw.”

Quickly all the work bench spaces fill, with a queue of 6 or more either watching or drawing as they waited for their turn. The quieter, shyer children used the opportunity to watch before they took their turn. One of the smallest nursery children came and watched, even though she wasn’t really able to express clearly with language what she wanted, she wanted to have a turn. She waited for such a long time but watched the others as they worked. Really patiently she sawed at her piece of wood, when she had two pieces of wood the look of satisfaction on her face was incredible. She pointed to the hammer and then to her wood and started hammering away.  When her grandparents came to pick her up she shows them what she has made.

By the end of the day some children are really tired with the effort and concentration they have put in. But for the amount of constant use of the tools for nearly two days we only have one cut and that one bashed finger. Children know the risks and are really careful for most of the time. The tools were always put away when they weren’t being used and I had to manage the numbers around the table as the observers got drawn into watching too closely.

For every generation, except the last few, mastery of tools and the ability to make things with our hands has been a key to our survival as a species. In another blog post I would like to explore the theory of recapitulation in relation to tool use and fires but for now what I am thinking about is; with the popularity of the work bench in the last couple of days, we will do anything in this project other than hammering and sawing? How else can we use our tools? What could we build? I used to manage a self build adventure playground, will we tackle larger scale structures like those we built there? or sculptures with nails in or..... 

I get to go indoors!!!

Being known as 'Lily who plays out for a living' has some drawbacks.....erm.... I'll tell you what they are when I think of them...

Excitingly, this winter, I will also be playing indoors too! A wonderful school has invited me into their foundation stage be their provider of springboards, their atelierista, their Lily who plays indoors sometimes too. We'll be going to the woods to do some Forest School sessions, carrying on some work we began last Spring but this will be an exciting opportunity to work over a number of terms with a group of children. Indoors and out, in the setting, in the studio, in the woods and in the grounds. 

The Foundation Stage is influenced by Reggio Emilia and I will be offering provocations and springboards and seeing where the children want to go with them. I have started to feel a bit nervous and excited! It's going to be a new challenge. But where to start? I have so many ideas for provocations I barely know where to begin. There is a part of me that is tempted to start with nothing and see where we end up.... watch this space!

Follow a trail through the woods

I remember back to when I first started working with children, and I remember distinctly the first group of children I ever took into the woods. We followed a trail that was marked with posts and signs and the children loved running from one signpost to another, checking that we were following the right symbols and always waaaay ahead of me.

The thing I noticed then and since, is that it takes a long time to lay a good trail or treasure hunt and then children will follow it in seconds.

I am a great believer that effort and time I put in to planning has got to a lot be less than the amount of time it absorbs others otherwise it's something I should keep as one of my own hobbies or entertainments. I remember two of my students complaining that they had spent an afternoon cutting out shapes for craft activity at an after school club and the children arrived, stuck them onto paper, bam! bam! bam!, in three seconds flat and were off to do something else.

This boils down to my default position when planning, "hmm maybe we get the children to do that bit".

So I don't ever lay anything but the simplest trails or treasure hunts for children to follow, maybe dropping a trail of feathers as I check out a site.

Collecting coloured feathers helped motivate this group
during a chilly walk and helped improve
 observational skills and awareness.

Otherwise, I see if the children want to lay the trail instead:

It helps improve empathetic skills; will someone else know this is the right way to go? How will they know which is the wrong way? How will we tell them if we are not there?

 You can split into two groups, each taking a territory and laying a trail for the other group to follow.

Have a set amount of time for each group to lay the trail and meet back at the start.

It's always good to have other things to look for along the way, animal footprints, interesting things to point out to the other group, it helps keep motivation and concentration levels up and encourages awareness of what is around.

 There are loads of different ways that you can make signs, but make sure they aren't somewhere that will get trampled.

 It can still help sometimes to swap one person from each group so at least one person knows where they should be going

Although that might just be taking the challenge out of it! Agreeing what signs mean is always helpful though.