Within the woodland young children of all abilities are making their own woodland monsters. The aim of making these woodland monsters is to combine your imagination, creativity, and use natural materials to produce weird and wonderful woodland creatures. This allows children to better understand nature, their environment and to express creativity and imagination.
Resources
- Clay
Explanation
Look for interesting shapes in tree trunks, branches, tree stumps or fallen logs. Perhaps a knot in the bark might be an eye, a broken branch might be a snout or a curving branch might be the body of a snake. Can you see a tree with a face like an Ent from Lord of the Rings, or an old man in the tree smoking a pipe?
How about making crazy characters? From old tree stumps or branches, you could make a mad professor, and place sticks for hair and wool for a moustache. You could make a clay head, find a place to put it, and then add stick hair and seed eyes to make a crazy monster.
Wild clay can be collected from the banks of clean ditches, streams or you can buy clay from educational suppliers, which dries in the open air.
Safety Tips
Wash your hands after the activity and be aware of low lying branches.