Tag Archives: Forest

The First Sunny Forest School Of The Year

The school went to forest school today and to our amazement it was sunny! Yippee!

When we arrived we started to make the fire so we could make pancakes Yum!

Mrs Finnie started to get out the eggs and water for the pancake mix, she called us up in pairs to make our pancakes . One of the pupils said the pancakes were too sloppy but most of the pupils loved it.

Meanwhile some other pupils were making mobiles one pupil said that her mobile kept on breaking but most of the mobiles look really good!

At the other end of the forest two pupils were making a mud slide and by the end of the morning their waterproofs were as wet and muddy as anything – and that was our morning in forest school.

DSC_0327

[Ed.]The Kilmodan Forest School is in a small piece of woodland owned by Donald McPhail who very generously allows the school  access throughout the year. The Forest School’s Mesolithic Day with the Walking Youth Theatre is pictured.

 

Workshop: Mesolithic and Neolithic Life in Glen

Date: [Morning] Wednesday 2nd of October 2013

Location: Kilmodan Primary School’s Forest School, Glendaruel

Workshop: Mesolithic and Neolithic Life in the Glen

Walking Youth Theatre Team: Sadie Dixon-Spain and Alana Mathers

Guests: Susan Gaffney and Alison Sykora

The aim of this exercise was to encourage the pupils of Kilmodan Primary to use their imaginations and experience what life would have been like in Mesolithic and Neolithic Glendaruel. This is where the timeline the pupils created begins, and by bringing to life this era, it allowed the children to have a realistic knowledge of how life has evolved, how the Glen has changed, and of course, aspects of life in the Glen which have remained from the Early Settlers.

We took part in ‘Forest School’, a weekly excursion to an allocated outdoor classroom the pupils undertake each week. Sadie and Alana from The Walking Youth Theatre were accompanied by weaver Susan Gaffney, and professional chef Alison Sykora, who kindly shared their expertise to give the pupils hands-on experience of Meso & Neo-lithic life.

2013-10-02-12.29.22

Susan taught the pupils how to weave plates and bowls, the way our Early Settling descendants would have done so in the very beginning of life in the Glen. This fantastic hands-on experience was enjoyed by all, and our pupils made some expertly designed serving dishes, just in time for a Mesolithic feast!

DSC_0349

2013-10-02-11.49.29

Alison cooked up a Mesolithic feast, with a little help from our hardy pupils! Food foraging brought to our attention the vast variety of ingredients that lie in the Glen, and by using traditional methods as far as possible, our pupils had a real-life Hunter Gatherer experience! From fruit to fish, vegetables to seaweed, an extraordinary insight into the feasting habits of 10,000 years ago brought the history of the Red River to life in a very exciting way!

DSC_0407

 

Workshop: New Term, New Website!

Date: Wednesday 21st of August 2013 

Location: Kilmodan Primary School

Workshop: New Term, New Website: Hunting and Gathering for Content!

Walking Youth Theatre Team: Sadie Dixon-Spain and Alana Mathers

Our Project

The Glen of the Red River project is part of the All Our Stories scheme, and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.  To recap on our project, visit our All Our Stories page on our website.

Over the Summer, our website for the project was created, and the work the pupils of Kilmodan Primary created in the previous school year was given an online home! With their fantastic logo, timeline, and artwork, our website is up and running – now all we need is content!

Sadie and Alana headed down from TWTC HQ this afternoon to host our first new term workshop, to begin gathering the content for the website.

Where do we start?! At the very beginning, of course!

Today’s workshop focused on the Mesolithic and Neolithic time periods, and we learnt all about what life would have been like for our hunter gatherer and early farmer ancestors! The pupils came up with some great stories about life as Mesolithic and Neolithic clans, and created artwork and dramatic pieces of life in the Glen over 8000 years ago!

The pupils also created a soundscape, exploring life in the Glen in Mesolithic times – the story included howling wolves, hunting wild boars, fishing in the river, and running through the foliage back to base camp away from predators!

The research gathered and work created today will be put on the website, to share with the whole world what Glendaruel would have been like at the very beginning of time!

Workshop: Interviews and Recording Information

Date: Wednesday 5th of June 2013

Location: Kilmodan Primary School

Workshop: Interviews and Recording Information

Walking Youth Theatre Team: Sadie Dixon-Spain and Alana Mathers

The second half of the session focused on interviews, encouraging the pupils to develop their communication, interviewing, research, and media recording skills, as well as discovering who the pupils would like to interview as part of the All Our Stories project, and identify individuals who may be iconic in the pupil’s Glendaruel research.

Firstly, as a group, we discussed what makes a good interview, and what an interviewer must do when conducting a recorded interview. The pupils gave us some great suggestions on questions that they would like to ask fellow Glendaruel residents, and were all very keen to interview the older residents of the Glen, who have lived here for many years. The pupils were enthralled in finding out more about what life was like for their grandparents generation when they were at Primary School – what facilities they had in the Glen, which school they went to, how did they travel to one another’s houses, what games did they play in the wide open spaces, and what they liked about growing up in such a beautiful, but rural, area. Many of the pupils began thinking about their family members who live in the area, and began taking notes on questions they would like to ask them on living in Glendaruel. It was a great exercise to also find out what the pupils already knew about the history of the Glen, particularly through discovering which Clans they descended from, and which family groups have become joined through the years by marriage.

The next part of the session saw the pupils putting their interviewing skills into action, by taking turns in interviewing one another in groups. Following some practice of identifying topics, constructing questions, how to begin and end an interview, and working on producing strong, clear vocals, the class reconvened, and the pupils would conduct their interviews in-front of the class. The interviews were recorded, and then played back to the group, who then identified the good aspects of what they had listened to, and those that had to be worked on. This was a great exercise that really gave the pupils confidence in conducting interviews, and it was encouraging to hear how keen they were to interview members of the community for the project.

Workshop: Creating Visuals

Date: Thursday 25th of April 2013

Location: Kilmodan Primary School, Glendaruel

Workshop: Creating Visuals

Walking Youth Theatre Team: Rebecca Bloom and Alana Mathers

Today’s workshop focused on creating visuals for the website, to showcase the Kilmodan Primary Pupils artistic talents.

To start, we spoke about families and Clans, identifying family groups that currently reside in the Glen that the pupils are a part of, or aware of, and discussing iconic families and Clans from the Glen’s past – particularly the Campbells and the Lamonts. We then moved on to creating Family Shields – each pupil began creating a shield for their family group in the Glen. A variety of shields were created – some including representations of the houses, family members, work and employment, tartan, and of course, the Red River.

We then moved back to the timeline, and spoke about the way the people would have dressed throughout the years. The pupils had some great ideas on what fashion would have been like throughout the different time periods, thinking greatly about what resources, fabrics, and techniques would have been available at each point. From this, the pupils were then each given a period from the timeline, and set the task to create a character as an icon of their specific point in history. From Mesolithic Hunter Gatherers in animal skins, to kilted Jacobites, mysterious looking Monks, to trendy Victorian gents, the pupils captured the timeline characters perfectly! Look out for the characters on the website, and on the timeline!