Really Rather Wild

15/11/2024

📚 Thank you for the very exciting invitation, South Marston CofE Primary School ✨

🦁 I LOVED sharing Searching for a Roarer with you all, and what an honour to help you open your beautiful new library! I can't imagine how many imaginations will be sparked in this special space for years to come! 📚🤩

30/10/2024

😍 Make a 'Warm Welcome' Jumper with us! 🧥✨

Today was the final Winter Wish Tree storytelling session and what a gorgeous one it was! We held a drop-in at Central Swindon Libraries & Information Service with Swindon City of Sanctuary and their We're Open Families group, plus guests!

💞 Fitting to the important work Swindon City of Sanctuary do to welcome people to our town, we themed our session on Welcomes - what makes us feel welcome? What does 'welcome' look like to you? How can we make others feel welcome? 🌍

🎨We then used our knowledge and new friendships to get creative. While the younger children coloured trees, leaves and stars, our older participants chose materials from collections labelled 'happiness', 'safety', 'inclusion' and 'communication' to create a jumper for their character to wear! Swipe to see how we got on, they all agreed the jumper looked very warm and welcoming...plus a little bit funky!😍

👏 Well done to all our little creatives, it's now less than a month until your drawings, ideas and most importantly your representation is up on display in Town Gardens for the Enchanted Gardens Light Trail! ✨

South Swindon Parish Council
City of Sanctuary

25/10/2024

🥹 This was such a special session for me ❤️

🌲✨ Yesterday I took The Winter Wish Tree project to children's bereavement charity Wiltshire Treehouse. We spoke about what feelings and emotions we have when someone special dies, what our comforts and happy things are and what we could do when someone wishes to hug their special person again.

🧸 We created our own memory bear, each choosing a section and writing a personal message to our loved one/s on the back. Each piece was stuck back on the bear, which will feature in the illustrations of this community story ❤️

✏️ The children also described and designed one of our characters, who I've helped them turn into someone super cute...swipe to see her and the bear! I feel beyond proud of our young participants and what they've created.

💔 This session had the potential to be very heavy, but I'm really lucky to have been working with Treehouse since they started almost 10 years ago. I stopped my group support work when I was pregnant but am such a huge supporter of Kath and the team. It also felt like a full circle moment to share my dedication to my dad in the front of Searching for a Roarer, I started volunteering for Treehouse just after the 1st anniversary of his passing ❤️✨

I wish we could package up this level of bereavement support and send it around the world ❤️

👏 Well done kids, I can't wait for you to see your courage and creativity on display in Town Gardens Bowl, Swindon for The Enchanted Gardens Light Trail 🌲✨📖

Thank you South Swindon Parish Council for enabling me to do this project, it really is something so special ❤️

24/10/2024

✨✏️ Last week, I had the pleasure of taking The Winter Wish Tree project to Swindon Carers Centre and their Young Carer's group.

🌲✨ The Winter Wish Tree is a community story that, once finished, will be turned into a trail through Town Gardens for South Swindon Parish Council's Enchanted Gardens Light Trail ✨ I have been working with schools and three very special children's groups, creating the story together.

🎨 Our Young Carers session focused on what it was like to be a young carer, what qualities a young carer has and what a child with extra responsibilities and less free time might wish for. The session was totally led by them and I can't wait to bring their designs and ideas to life for you all to see. Well done Swindon Young Carers! 👏

✨ The project rolls on to Wiltshire Treehouse this evening, where we'll be remembering our loved ones and creating our own memory bear art piece 🧸

The Winter Wish Tree story trail will be in place at The Enchanted Gardens Light Trail from 29 Nov - 24 Dec. The story will be accessible all day, but I highly recommend the light trail, find out more at: https://towngardens-swindon.co.uk/enchanted-gardens-light-trail/

23/10/2024

🔎 EXPLORE MORE 🪔 Diwali!

✏️ This week's Story Explorers are reading The Best Diwali Ever by Sonali Shah and Chaaya Prabhat, and creating their own rangoli patterns!

📚 This beautiful book introduces us to Ariana and her build up to an exciting Diwali celebration, but her little brother gets a bit carried away and ruins her plans. A great book for introducing Diwali to little learners alongside an engaging and sweet story for any time of year.

🎆 Our Explorers loved the often relatable story of an annoying younger sibling 😂 and they were really excited to talk about the fireworks. I loved the incredible richness of Chaaya's colourful illustrations and the extra information page at the back. Oh also those rangoli end papers are 😍

🔎 Take a look through this week's Explore More post to see our Explorer's rangoli designs and find out about a couple of exciting Diwali celebrations in our community this week...will you be celebrating light where you are?

🎨 Locally, our friends at Old Town and Badbury Park Libraries Swindon will be running a Diwali craft session this Friday! Swipe for more info and email [email protected] to book. We'll be there too, looking forward to getting crafty ✂️

There's also a free event at Haydon Wick Council on Saturday that looks really fun for families!

🎇 Are you marking Diwali or exploring more to try a new craft, foods or reading a new story? Let us know in the comments if you have any recommendations!

🍂 This was our last Story Explorers of the Autumn term, looking forward to all things Winter after the break! ❄️

16/10/2024

🔎 EXPLORE MORE 🎃 Pumpkin Week!

✏️ This week's Story Explorers are reading Pick a Pumpkin by Patricia Toht and Jarvis, and painting their own pumpkins in the style of artist Tasha Samasuwo 🎨🎃

🚀 Our explorers loved the rhyming story and looking out for spooky details like spider webs and witches in the illustrations. They really liked looking at the reference images of Tasha's pumpkins and trying their hand at her style. Tasha's answer about mistakes being cool came in very handy as we had some smudges that were turned into art with pride!

🔎 Take a look through this week's Explore More post to see Tasha's beautiful pumpkin pieces and find out more from her answers to our explorer questions!

🎨 I've had the pleasure of meeting Tasha and seeing her incredible work in person a few times and I'd highly recommend taking a look at her hand painted homewares as we approach gifting time of year! Take a look at her website here: https://www.natashasamasuwo.co.uk/

🎃 Are you planning on pumpkin picking this year? Will you paint or carve your picks? I've managed to avoid carving with my little explorer until now, but I've promised we'll do it this year...any tips welcome! 😅

16/10/2024

I'm loving all the creativity and community care that's coming to life in these visits! The project rolls on to The Croft Primary School and Swindon Carers Centre Young Carers tomorrow! ✨✏️

Year 4 had the pleasure of welcoming author Kate Claxton for a creative art workshop at school. They focused on creating beautiful illustrations in preparation for the Christmas Wish installation, which will be featured in the Enchanted Gardens light trail. The workshop was a fantastic way for the students to channel their creativity into a special community project! To learn more about Kate Claxton's books, take a look at her page Really Rather Wild ✨🎅

11/10/2024

🤔✨ What does a WISH mean to you? Wow, what a great couple of days I've had answering this big question with students from Lethbridge Primary School and King William Street Primary School!

🎨 I've teamed up with South Swindon Parish Council to get the arts and excitement started ahead of this year's Enchanted Gardens Light Trail in Town Gardens. We're working on an interactive installation themed around wishes, and after reading the children The Winter Wish Tree, we got to work on illustrating our own wishes, hopes and dreams.

😍 You'll be able to see this gorgeous community installation, and enjoy our Winter Wish Tree community story trail from November 29th - December 24th, as part of this year's stunning light display (I've seen a sneaky peek and it looks to be the best, most interactive year yet 🤩)

💡 Find out more about the light trail here: https://southswindonparishcouncil.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/1173651290/events/428613481

11/10/2024

😍 OH MY GOODNESS, did you see them? I'm SO pleased that so many of you spotted a roarer last night and LOVE when you all message me about it 😂🥰 So...it had to be done, a flash Searching for a Roarer sale!

📚 Grab a copy of mine and Amber Orozco's beautiful book, all about searching for magic in the night sky, for just £5 this weekend and FREE UK postage 🥰 The perfect way to extend the magic and talk more with your little ones about this stunning phenomenon of the skies!

✨ Tap the link here (oh they'll be signed too so think ahead to Christmas!) to get your copy: https://www.reallyratherwild.com/product-page/searching-for-a-roarer

📸 My viewing wasn't the best, so I've thrown it back to my once in a lifetime visit to Tromso in Norway, where I got the inspiration for the book and saw the most stunning display! Swipe to see me with a real life Venny the doggo 😍🐶

Oooh and I know lots of you will already have this book so I'd LOVE if you'd share this post and help me reach new readers 🥰✨📚 Thank youuuuu!

09/10/2024

🔎 EXPLORE MORE 🚀✨ Space Week!

✏️ This week's Story Explorers are reading Hello, Star by Stephanie V.W Lucianovic and Vashti Harrison, and making their own rockets, in celebration of World Space Week!

🚀 Our explorers loved Vashti's detailed night sky scenes and were thrilled to have guessed that the little girl in the story would become an astronaut. It's such a beautiful book, one explorer gave it 100 out of 10!

We discussed which of us would like to go to space and planned where we'd visit first in our rockets 🥰

🔎 Take a look through this week's Explore More post to meet a MUCH cooler Swindon author than me (isn't Head of Space Exploration the best job title?!) check out some of our rockets and a recommendation to help explore space from your sofa! 🛋️👩🏼‍🚀

😍 There are SO many great space books out there, let us know of any recommendations as our Explorers were really keen on this topic! ✨🚀

08/10/2024

🌟 SO pleased to be able to share a bit more about this year's winter project, all about WISHES and how they mean something different to us all ✨

✨🌳 THE WINTER WISH TREE 🌳✨...

I've LOVED having a story of mine up throughout the Enchanted Gardens Light Trail in Town Gardens for the last couple of years, and this year's story has been written ESPECIALLY for the trail! But...it's not finished! 🌟 The Winter Wish Tree is a community story, meaning I'll be taking it on a mini tour to get the help of schools and local children's organisations to complete it, to really capture the variety of wishes, hopes and dreams in our vibrant community. ❤️

I'll be working with 3 very special services to capture the voice of the children who benefit from them.
✨ Swindon Young Carers Swindon Carers Centre
✨ Wiltshire Treehouse, a children's bereavement charity very close to my heart. And,
✨ Swindon City of Sanctuary's We're Open Families group.

💡BUT that's not all! The wonderful folk at South Swindon Parish Council and Luminism have designed a beautiful community installation that you'll find in the Rose Garden during the trail. Here, at the touch of a button, the wishes of hundreds of local children will be illuminated and sent up into the skies. I get the honour of leading the school workshops to get these wishes made, and we start in Old Town this week!

✏️ If you'd like your child to get involved with either the story trail or the light up installation, there will be public opportunities! I'll share details of these soon but do check out these photos for installation craft days.

😅 It's going to be a BUSY few weeks pulling this all together, but I can't wait to share this new story with you all and to see the magic that our local children come up with.

Oh and there's a couple of other ways you can get involved, but that's another post 🥰✨💌📮🌟

02/10/2024

🔎 EXPLORE MORE 🌿 Drawing Challenges!

✏️ This week's Story Explorers are reading Never Let a Diplodocus Draw by and Diane Ewen, AND making their own Doodle Books with added prompts and challenges!

🦕 Our explorers loved Diane's fun and vibrant illustrations. Rashmi's story, with its bundles of imagination and 'what ifs', kept them wide-eyed and engaged 😍

October is THE month of drawing challenges*, so we're getting stuck into our own Story Explorer take on this - mini books filled with prompts and challenges, to help us draw when we need a little inspiration.

🔎 Take a look through this week's Explore More post to see how we got on, some extra prompts for Explorers at home AND find out about the art of Hirameki!

😍 As always, I'd love to see how our Story Explorers continue their topic at home or if any other little explorers get involved - do send me a picture of their creations 🥰📚🔎🌿

Oh and if you're local and have a budding artist at home, why not check out the workshops and clubs my Story Camp pal Rachel offers in Swindon - Let's Create Art Club 🎨✏️ They always look so fun!

*Here's some of our favourite online drawing challenges this month:
- on Instagram
Inktober
The Big Draw

26/09/2024

📢 CALLING ALL SWINDON TEACHERS and those working in education 🍎📚

I'm thrilled to be working with Swindon City of Sanctuary on the launch of their FAB Fusion book and activity boxes, designed to help welcome multi-lingual learners into the classroom.

There's a launch workshop happening at East Wichel Primary School next Thursday 4th October, 4-5.30pm, and we'd LOVE to see you there and show you the magic of these FREE boxes.

Find out more in the flyer here, or pop me a message. You can register your interest in attending to [email protected] (RSVP date says tomorrow, but SCoS have confirmed this can stretch to Monday 🥰)

Hope to see some of you there! 📚🌍❤️

25/09/2024

🔎 EXPLORE MORE 🌿 Autumn Nature Art with The Leaf Thief!

🍂 This week's Story Explorers are reading The Leaf Thief and embracing the official change of seasons, hello Autumn! We've also been having a go at the very wholesome art of leaf rubbing, and using our crayoned creations to make leaf crowns 🍂 Leaf rubbing was SUCH a hit, the kids actually squealed a bit and one little girl declared 'that was so satisfying!'. Proper joyful session 🥰

📚 As a fellow book creator (yes, I can hear the Kevin and Perry in that), I have some marvellously clever creatives in my network and this week that meant a quick chat with the illustrator of The Leaf Thief, Nicola Slater! Swipe through to Explore More about Nicola, see some original artwork of main character, Squirrel, AND see what's coming next for our furry-tailed friend...🐿️❄️

✂️ There are SO many awesome autumn craft ideas out there and with the leaves falling and conkers about to drop, it's the perfect time to take a stroll and gather some natural treasures for a free and easy craft activity 🍂❤️ You can find some great ideas here: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2020/10/autumn-leaf-crafts-for-kids/

I'd love to know your favourite thing about Autumn too! Let me know in the comments so I can share with our Story Explorers next week 🥰

24/09/2024

Lovely free resources and books available from National Literacy Trust in Swindon at this event tomorrow ❤️📚

✨ News about free resources and stories! ✨

We're teaming up with Growbaby Swindon this Wednesday to give away fun resources that support the development of children's early language and communication skills. 👐 🗣️

Our Early Years Manager Louise will be at Growbaby Swindon's shop and stay and play event handing out free resources including:

🔖 Little Moments Together cards for 0–2s
⭐ Interactive Chat Play Read booklets for 0–3s
🍁 A Walk and Talk Trail for 0–5s

Louise will also share a range of lovely picture books and touch-and-feel books for families to choose from and take home, including stories like:

🐶 That's Not My Dog
🐷 Never Touch the Stinky Piglets
🐪 One Camel Called Doug
📚 And many more!

Look out for us at Pattern Church (Penzance Drive) on Wednesday morning, 9.30–11.00! 😌

Check out our free resources online to see how the little moments you spend together make a big difference to little ones' development. 🧠

https://wordsforlife.org.uk/themes/start-for-life/

19/09/2024

Thank you to Julia's House Children's Hospice for such a warm welcome to their gorgeous Wiltshire facilities last month 🧡

It was my pleasure to bring My Mum's a Tiger and Searching for a Roarer to life (with LOTS of roars and claws from the children 🐯🥰) and create animal masks together, as well as sharing some of their own favourites stories.

Books are magic 🧡✨📚

18/09/2024

🔎 EXPLORE MORE 🌿 Story Explorers is BACK! And new for this year are weekly Explore More posts, designed for parents to see what we're getting up to PLUS some extra info on our themes, ways to engage more at home, local links and further book and craft recommendations 🥰

I LOVE sharing all this magic with my Story Explorers, so I wanted to share more with you all too!

MOON FESTIVAL 🥮🌕 Yesterday was special, it was our first session back, my birthday AND Moon Festival - one of my favourite topics! We read Mooncakes by Loretta Seto, learned about the traditions and storytelling that surrounds the festival and made our own Jade Rabbit moon lanterns.

The kids were THRILLED to be taking their own (battery operated 😅) flickering candle home, apologies to anyone who was harassed into staying up to see the Harvest moon...wasn't it beautiful though 😍🫣

🌕 Anyway, have a scroll through the images to Explore More (and see my moon capture!) This is super new so let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to include or explain! Happy Moon Festival and welcome/welcome back to the wild world of Story Explorers 🔎📚 Kate 🧡

23/08/2024

✨ Today I got to wear my 4 year old's jewellery and play mermaids with the fabulous The Magical Character Company at my favourite Hocus Pocus Play ✨🧜🏼‍♀️

I LOVE helping bring stories and magic to life here, even better when we're crafting too. We made sea creatures and took them for a swim with the little mermaid, made wishes, saw the moon and stars, did lots of playing, dancing and searching for that cheeky crab 🦀 plus, of course, a story time to fit the theme.

Thanks for having me and letting me be a big kid for the day 🥰✨🧜🏼‍♀️ bringing stories to life is the best job!