Thursday 1st August: Shopping and Making

Only four days until children come to visit. I have been thinking about the Wood Magic text, rereading, rereading. What will engage the children? Is it the toad? Is it the spider? Is it the evil Kapchack? Or, perhaps a love story? Aha! The young farmer and his girl from the village:

Once upon a time, many, many years ago, when the old gentleman was young, and lived with his mother at the farmhouse, it happened that he fell in love. The lady he loved was very young, very beautiful, very proud, very capricious, and very poor. She lived in a house in the village little better than a cottage, with an old woman who was said to be her aunt. As the young farmer was well off, for the land was his own, and he had no one to keep but his old mother, and as the young lady dearly loved him, there seemed no possible obstacle in their way. But it is well known that a brook can never run straight, and thus, though all looked so smooth, there were, in reality, two difficulties...

A rich young man also becomes attracted to the young lady and gives her a golden locket. The young farmer is jealous and will not speak to her. The young lady loves the farmer and tries to make amends:

"George, I have put the locket in the arbour, with a letter for you. If you will not speak to me, read the letter, and throw the locket in the brook."

But George never finds the locket nor the letter...for Kapchack, the magpie has stolen it. His love never returns and he grows old in his orchard. Until a storm comes and breaks the apple tree, revealing the letter and the locket. George reads the letter:

When the poor old man had read these words, and saw that after all the playful magpie must have taken the glittering locket and placed it, not in his nest, but a chink of the tree; when he learned that all these years and years the girl he had so dearly loved must have been waiting with aching heart for a letter of forgiveness from him, the orchard swam round, as it were, before his eyes, he heard a rushing sound like a waterfall in his ears, the returning light of the sun went out again, and he fainted. 

Treasure and Kapchack, living up to his name: magpie! What activities will engage the children with the story? I go shopping with William and Florence: some clay, some jewels, some gold paint, some sequins! The lost locket. We visit the museum with Joy, Natasha, Gill, and Billy...and make our own pendants. They are looking great!