A woodland forage can be fun for parents and children
IN early October, 22 third-class children stood in silence in a wood. Eyes closed, they were doing a sense meditation, noting the breath coming in and out of their nose, allowing the quietest sounds to enter their hearing, tasting the air, noticing the smells — trees, nearby cows, other animals.
The mostly nine-year-olds were involved in a project run by Wexford Forest School in association with Earth Force Education. Led in the five-minute meditation by Ciara Hinksman of Earth Force Education, the children were then asked to gently open their eyes and encouraged to find a place within the boundary of the forest school where they couldn’t see any other children.
“It was their special secret spot where they would sit for 20 minutes and pay attention to all the sights, sounds and smells,” says Hinksman.
The children had already been [introduced] to lots of woodland activity over a two hours so they had burnt off their excess energy.
“They were now in a place to sit against a tree, hear the wind blowing through the top of it and hear the tree creaking. They saw the tiniest spider webs and robins hopping about.”
The idea was to evoke in the children a sense of awe, wonder and connection to the land — a magical thing to do, particularly in autumn and as we approach halloween, the Celtic new year for our ancestors.
Hinksman is full of ideas for what parents and children can do in the woods to evoke the season’s atmosphere.
She suggests a woodland forage: sweet chestnuts to roast over the fire (make a cross in the bottom so they split open to make it easier to peel them) or use them in soup or as flour for cakes.
Make elderberry or hedgerow cordial out of rosehips and haws (parents need to know their berries). Or roast beech nuts. Adults can make sloe gin.
“Foraging is very much what our ancestors did. It’s ingrained into us and really resonates with children. It connects us to our past and is good for our health.”
Encourage children’s creativity in the woods, she says.
Get them to make a witch’s broom with sticks and twigs — tie with rubber bands. Then have an obstacle race where they have to sweep a ball around the trees and back again which they can do as a relay race.
Or get them making leaf masks, glue leaves together to make dresses or create dens out of leaf litter and sticks found on the ground.
Use clay or mud to make mini creepy-crawlies for Halloween. Use sticks and fallen debris to make eyes, antennae and lots of legs.
Go on mini-beast exploration: hunt for bugs, being careful to cover them over after finding.
Make dream catchers that look like spider webs from a willow hoop and shiny thread.
If you find a place where making a fire is allowed, build one and tell old Irish fairy stories (with an element of scariness). Roast marshmallows or pumpkin in tinfoil.
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