Making Woodland Crafts: Using Green Sticks, Rods, Poles, Beads and String (Crafts and Family Activities)

Wow! This the author s lifework condensed into one book so that readers can share in the fabulous fruits of this labour of love, fostered over many years in woodland education. Forest Schools have been all the rage in recent years and rightly so because children learn quite differently in an outdoor environment, surrounded by space, nature and the delights our changing seasons bring. This book will help even the most nervous and inexperienced practitioner develop a joy and confidence around the potential for learning the outdoors can bring. With beautifully detailed, easy-to-follow, hand drawn illustrations, step-by-step instructions for creating woodland crafts [tried and tested!] for a range of abilities. This book will fast become your Forest School Friend . It is the type of book you want to share, but be warned, you may end up buying for someone and then keeping it for yourself; it is that good! --Martine Horvath. EYE journal, volume 16, No 10, February 2015

Making Woodland Crafts is a well-produced and illustrated handbook by Forest School Educator Patrick Harrison. His ideas will be too basic for some people (e.g. making a tripod by tying three sticks or a blow pipe by removing the pith from an elder twig) but even those who have done these many times before might find it helpful to be reminded of possibilities before going out to the woods with a group. Patrick Harrison is also the illustrator and you feel sure he has done everything in it himself and it will work. He happily mixes the practical (camp furniture, ladder, stargazing chair) and purely decorative (bracelets, necklaces, festive candles) as do forest cultures the world over. Adults and children love using tools and the Forest School approach is to introduce knives, saws and axes at the appropriate stage and to provide practical instructions to minimise risk. But you can t learn how to use a tool properly from a book so it is an ideas kit for leaders rather than a teach yourself manual. --Ian Edwards

The author is an outdoor learning educator and Forest School practitioner and trainer. His aim with this book is to provide some basic knowledge and skills for both simple and advanced woodland craft, and what he has included comes from many hours messing about in the woods . He intends it for ...anyone, of any age, with a modicum of interest... , and it will certainly be useful for both parents and their children and teachers and their pupils.Divided into sections that the author intends to make the book as useful as possible, he also provides an introduction, a brief note on how to use the book and a two page spread detailing some basic useful tools . The first section is Choosing your wood , which briefly introduces the readers/user to four types of woodland hazel, willow, birch and elder illustrated by black-and-white photos and with notes on past uses of each type of wood and how to identify them and, with the exception of birch, how to coppice them. This is followed by a section of useful knots and lashings . There are pages on creating things like a hazel mask, a night torch and a staff, and sections on making frames and simple structures or fashioning a triangle, the latter going on to show hos basic triangles can be combined to make things like a tetrahedral step ladder or lantern. The author s illustrations are commendably clear and well-drawn, giving a good sense of the possibilities of the woodland activities you can get the children involved in. Furthermore the book has a good stout hardcover that should help preserve it as it is taken around outside. --Patrick Harrison