February already!

It's hard to believe we're nearly at the end of our first term of 2018 already. Such a short term, but we've fitted in quite a variety of activities.

Icing our snowman biscuits was a great welcome back and while we worked we had plenty of time to chat about things we' d like to do this year. The children a really keen to have another session with giant bubbles, and several want to have a go at making slime. The outdoor sessions were highly rated, good news as that's next weeks plan.

We had an arty week, experimenting with wet tissue paper pictures, it was great fun. You can see more of the final pictures over on our Facebook page

As always games have been a big part of our evenings, it's always fun to make a "jelly" with the parachute and what better place can there be for telling stories and jokes.

Children's Book Challenge.

This week we set ourselves a challenge, to depict popular children's books in play dough for the rest of the group to guess. How many of these books have you read?



1. He keeps his marmalade sandwiches under his hat.

2. He entertains the children with his balancing tricks, but the fish is not impressed.

3. Eggs for breakfast, eggs for lunch and eggs for dinner.

4. He tickled the teacher, he tickled the policeman

5. On Monday he ate through one apple, on Tuesday he ate through two pears.

6. In his stripy shirt he travels to all sorts of places, but can you find him.

How many did you get.
1. Paddington
2. The cat in the Hat
3. Mr Strong
4. Mr Tickle
5. The very hungry caterpillar
6. Where's Wally

Apples Apples Apples

An autumnal favorite, the apple.  There are so many different varieties to try, so this evening we did just that and tasted a few of them. Rating them on colour, smell, texture and taste and trying to describe each one. Here are just a few of the words used to describe the different apples.

You can see some of the other things we did with out apples over on Facebook
https://tinyurl.com/ybyd5j7f

Tesco, Bags of Help

Our project has been shortlisted for a public vote in Tesco’s #BagsofHelp initiative! Vote for us to win the top prize in store!

Help us to buy tents and camping equipment so that more children can join our camps, experience the outdoors and enjoy working and playing together.


Voting Begins on 1st November.

The Stokes Rocks

Lots of local families are having great fund hiding painted rocks around the area. The idea is that if you find a rock you can either keep it, or re hide it ready to bring a smile to someone else's day. There's a Facebook group so you can upload pictures of the rocks you've found, and perhaps track the progress of those you've hidden.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/389624198121053/

So we thought that for our last week of term we'd head out on a bit of a rock hunt. Of course we needed to have our own rocks ready to hide.

Even our logo made it onto a rock

Then we set off on a torchlit hunt round the local park and surrounding area, here are just a few of the rocks we found. All have now been hidden again for the game to continue.

 

 And a few of ours ready to hide

I wonder where they will go next.

Busy busy Autumn

 Our autumn term has been a very busy one, it's always fun to catch up with everyone again and see what people got up to over the long summer break. Although as so many of us were at summer camp there was a little less to catch up on this year.

We had a few warm evening where we could still play outdoors, and make the most of the autumn harvest with a few games of conkers.

September was also our picnic in the park with groups from across Bristol, and afternoon of games and fun. The younger children very much enjoyed hunting for all the bears around the the trees.

Our membership badges arrived just before the summer, so we've all been sewing some badge hangers to display them. Some people used buttons to add extra bling. We also tried our hands at some rope making, it's a tricky one to get the hang of, but one we can perhaps practice again another time. 

In so many cultures this time of year there are festivals celebrated with light, we opted for some colorful lanterns to brighten up the dark evenings.

Leader Training, welcoming our young leaders

We've been lucky enough in Bristol to be able to access some funding from the Alpkit foundation, for bushcraft training for our leaders. It's always a popular activity at camps and groups, so it's great to be able to get some more leaders ready to run things.

It's great that our young leader have been able to take part in the training too, many of them have enjoyed these activities as younger children and are keen to learn more about running them safely.

The first of our training sessions was in early September, over a rather damp weekend, giving us all a certain motivation to make sure our shelters really were waterproof!

Practising knots

Fire lighting was quite challenging with the wet weather, but everyone boiled their water in the end.

and of course cooking over the fire

New Term

Our sessions will restart on Sept 13th, please get in touch if you are interested in joining.  We have places available for children aged 6 - 11.

info@southwestwoodcraft.org.uk


£10 for a 5 week trial. Our usual cost is £40 per 12 week term (i.e 3 times a year).

Moths and Molehills, summer camp 2017

Around 50 people from groups across Bristol joined for a week of camping in Wales.

Our site had many molehills, the combination of loose soil and the frequent rain showers delighted our youngest children who had great fun in the mud. There was plenty to keep the bigger ones busy too, we made kites, tie dyed t shirts, made some fantastic mirrors decorated with bits and pieces found on our walks and as always at camp the bushcraft area was popular with lots of children whittling green wood to make toasting forks and butter spreaders as well as having a go at lighting their very own campfires.

The fire was also a focus for cooking and eating together, there's nothing quite like a campfire potato. Yummy!

On Monday afternoon the whole camp joined together for a fast paced game, based around two unhappy tribes of shellfish who had to join together and defeat the sharks, assisted by our very own Poseidon.

The evenings we packed too, as well as our usual campfires we were joined by a local moth expert. He brought along several moth traps, don't worry, the moths were not hurt, just attracted by the light so we could see them.
It was amazing to see just how many different species we were sharing the space with. We were also treated to an aerial display by the local bats several times, and a few of us stayed up hoping to spot a few meteors.

Being close to the beach we were able to head off site and explore the coast too, whether that was building sandcastles, finding caves in the cliffs or body boarding.

It was great to see our young leaders in action too, many of whom have come all the way through the group having joined when we first began in Bradley Stoke. Each camp we divide into "clans" who take it in turns to make sure all the daily chores are done. Each clan was lead by two of of young leaders, who worked hard to make sure that everyone was included and all the work was done. They also excelled themselves running games, crafts and even reading bedtime stories to the youngest campers.

Summer evenings

There is nothing like a warm summer evening for playing games and exploring outdoors.  Our final term of the school year is always a busy one for games whether it's Frisbee, rounders or hide n seek. That's not to say we don't find time for some other things too.

Giant bubble blowers were fun

Indoors we had fun playing games, this one took a lot of skill to keep everything balanced.

We were also getting ready for the summer camp, making our own personalised groundsheets to sit one.

 

Summer is also the time when we get out and about running events at the local festivals, this year we were in both Bradley Stoke and Patchway. The wooden badge making proved quite popular, with a number of children remembering us from the previous year.
 

Fun in the park

Earlier in the term we made seed bombs, as the weather is now warm enough and the evenings light enough we set out to the park to plant our wildflowers. It was great fun and we hope to be back soon to see how things are growing.

There was also time for a few games on the field.