Mapping the emergence of story making in the woods – the connections between stories and between story-tellers – I’m struck by the generative power of Greg’s first narratives.  They were told clearly and excitedly, with a smile of someone who has found his voice and is being listened to (and who is about to say something scary!).  But just as significantly, they were open generous stories, by which I mean they invited and inspired others to join in.  In fact many of the children picked up specific phrases or important words form Greg’s stories to start their own.

Here is Greg’s first story again (told after we heard Ruby’s stories about being lost and found, and picking up some of her interest in danger):

“Someone went to the woods in the night – called Greg – and he saw a shadow in the woods, and then he saw a skeleton.”

Several children had asked what the woods were like at night (many of them think I live there).  Fred asked me if there were “loads of bats and owls”, Harry asked if I slept in the woods. The class had also been exploring ‘light and dark’ at the nursery school quite recently – so the group interest in night-time was a live one.

But by making his story happen at night, Greg also gave it some of the suggestive qualities that have inspired so much imaginative play in the park, around the old log and the hole in the tree.  His story is clear and short (in the same way that the log and hole are clearly defined and noticeable), but the night and its darkness, like the unknown or ambiguous aspects of the environment, mean you can’t necessarily tell what things are.  The shadow is brilliant – it could be any number of things, and what is a shadow anyway, when you stop to think about it…you can see it but you can’t feel it, you can move it but not catch it.  And if you don’t know for sure what things are, you have an open invitation to imagine…

The shadow in Greg’s first story is followed by a skeleton.  In his second story it has already changed and found a home ‘in the bushes’ (where curiously you wouldn’t be able to see it – this shadow seems to be becoming quite physical).  Ruby, who told the first stories, has been invited in too:

“Once upon a time Ruby and me went out in the woods in the night and we saw a shadow in the bushes and it was a dinosaur. And we ran away as fast as we could and the dinosaur didn’t know, so we pressed the button – and we went home.

And the dinosaur smashed the window, and we went under my cover and the dinosaur couldn’t find us so he went back to the bush in the wood.”  

Greg particularly enjoyed telling us about the dinosaur smashing the window! – his story is still about danger and safety, a great narrative of pursuit and escape, with the wild danger coming right up to his house this time.   But there’s an even safer place to hide than home; the intimate, real, and invented world of ‘under the covers’.  A child’s world.

When we hear this second story at the beginning of the next session Ruby immediately wants to tell another.  It’s amazing how her original stories about being lost/finding her parents/loving the woods and her friends, meet and play with Greg’s words and suggestions, then come back to their own familiar ending:

“Once upon a time there was a little girl called Ruby and she went for a walk in the woods.  She saw a shadow and it was in the bushes coming out and it was a big dinosaur, and she ran and ran through the woods – she needed to find her way home.

She was lost in the woods, but she saw something in the bushes. It was her mummy.”

From Greg and Ruby’s first stories there have been all sorts of beginnings, middles, and ends, that other children have found and made their own (see next blog).  It’s interesting in this context to think about what we value in children’s creativity and self-expression.  In a couple of recent nursery projects I’ve come across a belief that “if you ask children to talk together they just copy each other”, and a corresponding over-emphasis on individual work and separate observation and assessment.  What is striking in the woods storytelling is how important it is to be in a group, how copying can be a fantastic way of starting something new –  imitation and imagination go hand in hand, and develop together.

Vivian Gussin Paley has written brilliantly about how the classroom community is built above all by the stories, vocabularies, and imagined worlds that children and educators share together (for example in “The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter”).   Children’s stories are full of invitations: invitations to stop and listen, to step into an imagined world you didn’t know about before; invitations to other children to join and carry on making that world; invitations to the world to be re-made and tested and understood.  Yes, there is great similarity, and all this implies in terms of shared culture and social identity for the children who tell stories together, but there are also subtle and striking individual differences, that are well worth listening for.

James also wanted to tell a story after we listened to Greg and Ruby’s stories,  and there are elements of both in his new version:

“Once upon a time there was a mummy and a little boy called James.  And they went into the woods, and they saw a shadow.  It was something out of the bushes.  It was a dinosaur.  And they found a pointy stick and they made a big hole.  And then they put him in it, and they put it all over him.  And then he was gone.  And we never found him.” 

And now there’s something new ; there’s not running away, there’s fighting danger, and there’s the importance of a definite ending…

Things can disappear into the hole.  Things can come out of it.  There could easily be something inside…

Alice: “I can hear the tree singing.”  Ellis: “Did you know, there is a fox living in that hole?”  Katie: “Birds live in there with sticks and leaves.”  Evie: “I’ve found a treasure chest.”  The tree is special, suggestive, iconic.  “All of these haven’t but only this tree have” says Claudia.  It is the only tree with such a hole in it.  Claudia thinks an owl lives in the hole, and asks if owls like sticks.   She thinks they would like leaves to eat.

Avni sees the fine detail and the richness: “There’s a spider’s web – there’s a fly – it looks fantastic! The birds are tweeting.  Can you hear a parrot?”

There are other holes in the woods, many of them in the ground.  Some children are fascinated by these mysterious places, the places we can’t see fully (underground, inside trees, in the middle of thickets) and in which, as a consequence, the imagination can take hold…Here is an example, involving two boys, Ellis and Jamie, who have had a narrative of adventure, trepidation, and bravery running for some time in their explorations of the park.  Today they are intent on finding treasure:

“It will be hidden under a tree”.

They see a cat. 

“Jamie, don’t run past the cat” says Ellis.  “I think the cat will know where the treasure is”.

They find a log with a hole in it.  “I think a mouse lives in there” says Jamie.  The boys search for the mouse, then make a connection… 

“Can we find the big hole in the tree?”  Ellis leads the way.   “A fox lives in there” says Jamie, “I can see his teeth.  He climbs up and jumps in.”  Jamie is intent on climbing in the hole to find the fox.  “I’m bigger” he says.  Ellis says “we need a net”.  Harry joins in:  “We need a grabber” The boys decide that a long stick will do and the three of them move a very long branch over to the hole.  “I can do it, I’ve got big muscles.” “Well I’m three” says Harry.  They work really hard to get the stick into position. 

Ellis runs to tell another group of children “there’s a fox in that tree”.  James comes quickly to investigate.  Fred joins in.  The boys all try to move the stick to grab the fox.  Ellis runs to tell Serga (his teacher) and Katie and Ellen.  Ellen and Katie join the fox boys, trying to move the ‘grabbing’ stick to catch the invisible fox in its hole.

The tree with the hole is near to the large fallen log (see “The World in a Log”).  They seem to share their suggestive and generous natures – there have been no arguments about who exactly lives in the hole; the fox, the owl, the spider, the fly, the birds, the singing voice, the sticks and leaves all seem to be able to be there for different imaginations, with no-one needing to dominate.

It is an example of something we are noticing a lot in the woods – that children and their stories can co-exist quite peaceably.  There is plenty of room for difference and for joining in.  Play is socially more fluid, and although there is strong individual authorship in the imaginary and dramatic worlds that the children are constructing, there is also room for exchange, and for surprising alliances to build between children who do not usually play together in the classroom.  These cross-connections between children are growing stronger still, as a culture of making and sharing stories in the woods is developing within each group and across the two classes.  Listening to each other’s stories, they are captivated.  And a woods mythology is beginning to grow…

We’ve been thinking about how children are exploring the woods and park, and as they re-visit, about the patterns that are beginning to emerge.

For some groups of children discovery is still about freedom and dynamic movement – they are expanding and exploring boundaries, moving with growing confidence and skilled orientation, playing games of fast running and following that play with sociability and belonging as well as knowledge of the park.

But other children want to settle in places they have already found, and listening to what happens in this kind of re-visiting, we are beginning to understand what inhabiting these places might mean to them; the qualities of spaces that draw particular children and groups of children, how inhabiting the space expresses and develops social relationships, what kind of rules the children make about their spaces, and the language they are finding to explain it to others.

There are a number of places to which children keep returning; here is one of them…

It’s a large fallen log, part of the split willow tree that still stands behind it.   Sometimes three, four, five different groups are playing around it.  Sometimes one child stays there alone, content and engaged in narrating a kind of play that weaves words and actions continuously.

Elias and Evie are jumping off the log, and also trying to move it.  It rocks but is much too big to shift anywhere.  Elias jumps again, very happy with his flight through the air, and his landing.  Avni is standing nearby watching.  She is finding it difficult to join in with the play around her, but engages verbally and in her imagination with the new environment:

“You know, we have got three woods.  We have only got one wood. We are going to the woods today.  But the woods is too wet.  I don’t like my wood.  I was too hot for the sun. The log is too big.  You can’t sit on it…walk on it” (the first week she spent a long time balancing on long branches in the wood). “Fifik is on holiday.”

Ethan (at the ‘back’ end of the log):  “There’s bees in our radio. This is a seal.  We got bees computers.  There’s a plug in our radio.  It goes into the ground and it goes down into the log and here”…he shows where with a long flexible stick coming down from the main log and over towards the bushes nearby.  He connects it up.  “I got all my powers up” he had said the time before when putting a shorter stick into a hole in the log.

Elias and Evie are still jumping, and also balancing along the log.  Zac and Luca, Joshua and Riley are also interested in the physical balancing, and the play with sticks and electric power.  Riley watches, only climbing on to the log after a long time looking, and balances along it, his eyes smiling.  Danielle, amongst the electricity, the jumping and balancing, is quietly but repeatedly exploring a hole in the log with a delicate stick.

Ethan moves another bigger branch to the log; “that’s the brake”.  “In case we’re going too fast?” asks a teacher.  “No.” And a bit later again, “that’s braker”.  The naming seems more significant than its explanation and reminds me that Ethan has been coming to the log since the first visit, and his engagement with it has always been very precisely expressed – it seems important to him to name things and to narrate them with his own words and meanings:

“It’s a horsey” (the log). “Where are you going?” someone asked.  “To a park.  No, to a baddy park, a baddy place, a castle.”  Ethan moves to the back of the log.  “Parties in the horsey back” (there is a hollow there with soft rotted down wood inside).  “We got a horsey child”.  He picks up a leaf from the hollow, shows it “this is our horsey child leaf..it’s in the back of our horsey”.  He runs towards the front of the log, and puts the leaf in another hole “washing it…I’m washing the leaf child”.  He jumps back on the log and is shooting baddies with his stick, and flying.

Back at the same log in the afternoon, with a different group, one child who has been making ‘fires’ with branches in the woods with his friend, comes away to climb on the log.  Nobody else is there.

“This one means I have to go backwards” (pressing a bump in the log’s bark).  “I just made myself into a plane…and that’s why I’m speeding through the water…that’s why I’m standing up to go backwards.  This is where you jump in the sea.  This is a fire bobber.  I got the fire done” (at the hollow where Ethan found the ‘leaf child’ in the morning)… “that’s the beomb…that’s called sambra…it goes through the wood.  I think it’s to turn the bombs on so the train can shoot.  It’s going to go again.  Going to light the fire.

First I need to light my hand – my thumb I need to light” (putting his thumb in a small hole at the front of the log). “ I need to go in here first, I need some more fire on my hand.  There’s some more fire on my hand. Two bits, I did two now, I need to do them together.  Good, I hold onto my handles” (some old shoots still left on the fallen log).  “I didn’t burn them.  Woah! It’s dangerous! Woah! I fell off !  I need to climb up again that’s why.  But first I need to light the fire in this little corner.”

I’m amazed by the generous nature of this log – the way it inspires fantasies of movement and travel, although it remains itself resolutely on the ground.  The way it draws stories of power, electricity, fire, even though it is dead and in places rotting away.  The way it can accommodate so many different dynamics and explorations, although it is only one old log.

And I’m wondering what we can learn from listening to children playing around the log – what are the qualities and characteristics that they find so intriguing and provocative, and how could these be brought alive, back in the classroom, and the built environment in which children spend so much of their formative time?

We are beginning with small groups visiting the park for about an hour each (though planning soon to stay for longer).  So on the first day we had four different groups of three to four year olds coming to explore the park, many for the first time.  We had also decided in our planning session, that a spirit of exploration would be one of our key values, and so the children were welcomed to our camp to the woods, and then invited very openly to explore – to see what it was like here today, to explore with their bodies and senses, and to share the discoveries they made if they wanted to, with someone else.

It was amongst other things an intriguing natural experiment; four groups of children the same age, from the same educational setting, meeting the same place on the same day, with an open invitation to explore.  Where would each of them go, how would they travel, what would they find?

We were amazed at how each group, and smaller groups within these, met the same place in such boldly different ways.  There was plenty of decision making and authorship “I’m going that way… we’re going this way… I’m going a far way, down here”.  There were surprise meetings where paths through the tangled thickets suddenly joined. One group played with huge running laughing energy this game of losing each other and finding each other again, for almost the whole hour.  Three girls came out of this game right at the end to play another, in the wide open field: a different game of losing and finding, safety and danger: “pretend I was in the house and you came and you saw my bike lying down and I was dead.”  And then repeatedly when the ‘mother’ arrived from the edge of the woods the dead daughter was alive again and they needed to go together to find the other mother, “now you and me were her mum”.  Lying down in the grass and looking up at the sky was also part of the game, and swapping over.

There were groups that found their way to the absolute edges of the woods; the fence that runs down one side, the furthest path, the “dead end – it means you can’t go any more”.  Elias was fascinated by the dead end, went right to the end of it, moved branches that were blocking a way between a tree-trunk and some bushes and when he had finished said “now it’s not a dead end, I didn’t make a dead end”.

There were many meetings with sticks – bigger and bigger ones, branches that were hauled out of bushes and balanced on; sticks that were tools, brushes, extended arms to meet the high-up branches of trees.  There were meetings with creatures – ladybirds, a centipede, wild monkeys, a gruffalo, and a gorilla – and leaves “it’s soft – you can stroke it”.

Out of curiosity back at home, I looked up the dictionary definition of exploring and found it surprising:

1) to investigate systematically

2) to search into or travel in for the purpose of discovery

3) to examine minutely

4) to examine for diagnostic purposes

It was far more structured and deliberate than I had expected.  I use the word often but for its open connotations– exploration as an invitation to go somewhere unknown, or in an unfamiliar way; exploration as both physical and imaginative journeying, slipping the boundaries between the two; exploration as a counter-weight to a version of education that signposts the way with lesson objectives, and knows where it’s going before it gets there.

But reflecting on the children’s explorations, which certainly more than met all my meanings of the word, I realize how much of their ways of discovering have also to do with systematic investigation, minute examination, and travelling for purposes of both discovery and diagnosis.   It will be fascinating to see how this process develops both in and out of the classroom, as these children continue their explorations, in any and every sense of the word.

Stories, the new stories these children will make, imagination, lurking, darkness, wildlife, wintertime, seasons, being the first, adventure, escaping, birds, distress, light, dark, perspective, different places, exploring, finding things, big scale, bears, wolves, colours, beauty, curiosity, sinister, empathy, risk 

Participants were invited to explore the park and woods with one of these words or images in mind, and at the end to bring something back, something they found or words to represent where they went.

These are some of the possibilities of the space that were encountered that afternoon:  cosy places, ‘cocoons’, a world of leaves of different colours and textures, safe places, quiet and peacefulness, secluded spaces, the ‘darkest place’, stories, the perfect tree-house tree, and a dead bird which Serga thought twice about bringing back but which we agreed would have been welcome and fascinating for children to see.

We decided to work with three strong values, to focus our pedagogy and practice through the project and create links between the experiences of the different groups of children and practitioners;

• listening
• sharing fascinations
• a spirit of exploration