Hunting For Fairy Tales of the Yeti
Life Vision Academy Wood Cutter Workshop
Our first workshop was very exciting after a first meeting celebrating Christmas together in the play-ground, and surprise surprise the school have given me a home next to school, so we can do a lot of work together very easily.
You will find the gallery of pictures from the first workshop on the web-site. The pictures may be a little dark around the edges as we did most of our work by the light of my head torch (…a useful tool in my bag of tricks….I wonder what else you have hidden in there for me to use?).
The theme of this workshop followed the old Nepalese story of the Wood Cutter. It goes something like this:
Once upon a time, a poor wood cutter who lived in the country went out to cut wood to build a home for his family.
However when he started to cut down a tree the head of his axe flew from his grasp and land “SPLOSH”, in the lake. He was very sad and sat down holding his head in his hands.
Then as if by magic a magical creature appeared before him and said “don’t worry, here I have your axe”, and presented the wood cutter with a golden axe. The wood cutter however said “that is not my axe” and returned to holding his head.
Then for a second time the magical creature appeared saying “do not worry so, for here I have your axe”, and held out to the wood cutter a silver axe. But again the wood cutter looked at the axe saying “no, this is not my axe” and he returned to holding his head. Finally for the last time the magical creature returned saying “worry no more for I have your axe” and showed the wood cutter an iron axe.
“Yes” said the wood cutter this is my axe, and he was very happy and took the axe and began to cut the tree once more. However the magical creature did not go away and said to the wood cutter “because you were so honest in saying that the golden and silver axes were not yours then you can have them as well”. Well the wood cutter was very happy indeed and by selling the gold and silver his family were able to have a beautiful house and live happily ever after.
It is exam time here so the children at Life Vision Academy stayed after school and into the evening to tell me their stories. We finished the day with some lovely soup.