Representing Robins

 


“I’ve put you on Christmas cards today” explains K, handing me a list of children’s names. I am working at a small Forest School setting, covering for a practitioner who is on leave. I was here last week and the sudden temperature drop in a previously mild autumn had taken some children by surprise. This week it feels that equilibrium has been restored, sufficient warm layers applied, a crisp cold day with pale lemon sunlight. And so the year is turning and we must make Christmas cards.

Forest School pedagogy is shaped by child-led learning, experimentation, risky play. Which is why when K shows me the Christmas card resources she’s rather apologetic; “The only prescribed craft activity of the year, we don’t usually do this…” she tells me. First I must model writing the child’s name on a whiteboard for them to copy onto a slip of paper which will be pasted inside the card. Then I should direct them to remove their gloves and coat the fingers and most of the palm of one hand with brown paint, and the heel of their hand with red. This must be then placed neatly onto a folded piece of green card to make a handprint. Supervised application of one yellow felt triangle for a beak and one googly eye, a few strokes of black pen for legs and voila! A Christmas robin. Finger-painted white snow surrounds to be encouraged.

My co-creators for the day, all aged between three and four years old, of course have their own ideas of what a robin should look like, or indeed whether they want to make a Christmas card in the first place. Christmas is still a month away, which is an eternity when your concept of time is not fully developed. Some do not wish to feel paint on their hands, some would rather be off poking something with a stick, some wish to cover the whole page with a wash of brown (which arguably would be a good representation of most open air settings at this time of year, we’re big on mud), some would like a crown of beaks or more than the ration of one eye apiece.

Despite my inner qualms of privileging product over process, by the end of the day I have achieved my task, a row of Christmas robins in varying stages of abstraction are drying in the open-sided wooden shelter. During the day there have also been the usual excitements and tribulations that make up a preschool day. I have sat on a log in the sunshine, small bundles of waterproofed bodies pressed against me while we read about “Badger and the Big Storm”, warm hugs are distributed freely when the pain of a bumped knee or missing mummy has become too much. A walk before lunch reveals spiky dry teasel heads, way above head height if you’re three, how exciting is that! Milk and biscuits signals time for pick up, I remove my waterproof trousers and boots, shuck off a few warm layers and prepare for my cycle home.

I had intended to write something completely different today, but it was a difficult morning at home and I was thrown off course. This bubbled up instead. I'd like to do some more thinking and writing about creativity and how we nurture it not just in children but in ourselves. Maybe I need to learn the lesson of process over product too... The photo shows a fabric robin decoration I made when I was craft blogging about 15 years ago.

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