By Carrie Komesch, Educator
There was a conspicuous focus on making art this week at Forest School, starting on Monday, when the students put together their own notebooks from cardboard/twine/and paper. Throughout the rest of the week, there were many moments when students were content to sit and draw, either by themselves or with input from me or their peers. I love seeing the kid of art that children make, and watching it emerge in a wild environment like the Rocky Mossy Place makes it even more special.
Another prominent theme that emerged this week was “potions” and the creation/distribution thereof. It began when a student filled a tall metal bucket with water, whose translucent depths were soon crying out to be muddied. And so the children gathered, and they added dirt and mud and clay, and sometimes soap or paint (“No thank you.”), and produced dripping cupfuls of turbid concoctions that were meant for good (“to stop you from becoming a zombie.”) or for evil (“to make you into a zombie.”). Other times, the picnic table beside the potion functioned as a coffeeshop, and J., stepping into the joint role of owner and barista, would offer me cappuccino after cappuccino in a passable British accent that he tells me he learned from the Harry Potter movies.
Caffeine fix or imminent zombie transformation? ONLY TIME WILL TELL!