The Value of a Stick

On Friday, I attended a training day entitled 'The Value of a Stick' led by the immensely talented  and inspiring Annie Berrington of Get Out More CIC. The aim of the day was to share ideas about this most wonderful and adaptive of learning resources.

We began the day by selecting a stick and sharing (and acting out) how the stick could be used. There were suggestions aplenty, a few of which I have listed here:

A magic wand, a potion stirring stick, a conductor's baton, a musical instrument, a mustache, a ladybird ladder, a counting device, plant identification device, a sword, a writing implement, javelin, skewer for cooking food on, fuel for the fire, den building material, fishing rod, prodder, picture frame....to name but a few.

Next we played a warm up game utilizing our sticks -Stick Ninja.

How to play Stick Ninja.

• Choose an honorable opponent
• Select two sticks each (about thumb thickness and the length of your forearm)
• Insert one  stick up each your sleeves leaving a few inches of the stick protruding beyond your fingertips (the stick should along the outside of your forearm and the back of your hand).
• Face your honorable opponent and bow
• Now aim to grab your opponents sticks before they grab yours ( you must bow each time a stick is claimed and you must stay in your position facing each other - no running off and hiding your sticks!)
• The winner is the first person to relieve their opponent of both of their sticks.
• This game can also be played with leaves instead of sticks.

Our next challenge was to work in small groups to create the tallest free-standing stick tower possible. We were given three minutes to collect as many sticks as we needed to build our tower. We were then provided with one piece of string and allowed a further few minutes to construct our tower. Each group chose a similar pyramid structure for their tower. We used the Forest School approved 'Annies high' measurement to judge the height of our towers. The winning tower stretched an impressive 2 and 2/3 Annies high.

Next we moved on to creating a Forest School item that required the joining of two sticks with the ever useful clove hitch. We were to produce a dagger or sword in readiness for a choreographed battle scene. Once the hilt of the sword was attached with a clove hitch, it was stabilized with a spot of square lashing.

We then divided in to teams to plan our battle. The rules dictated that there was to be no contact and that the moves were to be played out in slow motion and gradually sped up. There was a host of different performance styles from flamboyant dance moves to loud warrior cries!

After a recap of safe working methods for using a range of forest school tools (including bow saws, sheath knives, loppers and hand drills) we separated into groups to plan a game made from wood. In the afternoon session, the games would be constructed and presented 'Dragons' Den' style to the rest of the group.

Games constructed included wooden cars, a multi-purpose checkerboard game, a printing stamp and a glockenspiel. With my partner, I chose to make a bow with customised arrows. We used willow for our bow as it has a good degree of flexibility and was readily available. Flexible hardwoods make the best bows. Yew was traditionally used for making bows in the UK. We attached our twine using, you've guessed it, a clove hitch, ensuring that we had the right amount of tension to fire the arrows. In order to make the arrows identifiable once fired (the aim of the game was to see who could fire their arrow the furthest) we personalized them with feathering, leaves and catkin flights.

After we had all taken our turn in the Dragon's Den we concluded our activities with a game of capture the flag (using sticks for the flagpoles of course) which really seemed to bring out our competitive instincts.

To conclude our session, we used yet more sticks to create reflection squares in which to record the events of the day.

I am looking forward to sharing my sticky ideas with my groups this week. I am sure they no doubt will have lots of other suggestions for uses of the humble, yet stickacular stick.

For more stick inspiration:

Nature Detectives Stick Activities


Nature Detectives Twig Towers

The Stick Book

Stick Man