Activity: Plan a 'Wolf Brother' Night

Sometimes a book really captures the imagination and lends itself perfectly to being used as the spark for an after-school event. 'Wolf Brother' is one such book.  Teacher Sue Wilsher explains how to prepare and run an evening autumnal event for a group of children, focused on Michelle Paver's Wolf Brother book.

'Wolf Brother' Night

For this after-school event, we always limit numbers to about 30 children to make it manageable, picking names out of a hat to choose - or doing it on a class-rotation basis. The event works at this time of year when the dark evenings create a suitable atmosphere for a campfire and a quest! This outline can be adapted to include as little or as much as a school can manage. For example, we always have jacket potatoes round the camp fire as our kitchen staff are very supportive, but not everyone might feel they can manage - or afford - this. Obviously, it works best with careful preparation and good levels of adult support, but in my experience, the adults enjoy it every bit as much as the children!

PREPARATIONS

Before the event and prior to the children's arrival you will need to prepare the following:
A permission letter, suggesting the children wear old clothes and bring a torch
Health and safely paperwork!
Clan symbols for quest/ map of grounds
'Found' sheets for clip boards

You will need to gather:
Spare torches for those who don't have them.
Face paints
Clip boards
Pencils
A fire pit (we had a metal one on the playground)/ wood/ matches

FOOD

Liaise with kitchen staff about the food side of things. Our lovely cook ordered it all for us, put in the spuds and left everything else ready on a trolley for us. Whilst the children were on the quest with one/ two members of staff 'supervising', one stayed with the fire pit and the other two sorted the food. They then went back to do the hot chocolates once the children were eating.

You need to buy:
Potatoes/ beans/ cheese/ hot chocolate powder/ milk (or water depending on how you make it!)/ mini marshmallows/ big marshmallows/ skewers for toasting

You will need to set up:
The fire pit needs to be lit before the children arrive, but then needs to be watched. We had buckets of water on standby!
Benches around the pit - we had four benches (one for each clan) in a square around the fire
The quest - put large photocopies (A3) of the symbols in the allocated places. You can make this as challenging or easy as you wish
Check the food is going to be ready! Make sure everything is on the trolley.
Check you have the sheets / pencils / clipboards ready for the quest.
A face painting area / decide on the clans/ symbols

THE EVENT

On arrival, the children are allocated a clan (you can keep friends together, but this also allows you to separate some children if you think it might be advisable!) and have their clan tattoo applied to their cheek(s) / hands if they are comfortable with this. Keep this simple so it is quick. We do this in a classroom as we tick them off on the list. We then had them all in place for a quick safety briefing about the fire, not being silly with torches (shining in eyes etc), behaviour during the quest.

Lead the tribes to gather on benches around the campfire. We usually set up a 'square' of benches around a fire pit. At this point, I usually ask them to put their torches under the bench until needed.
Read a carefully chosen section from Wolf Brother - it's wonderfully atmospheric by the crackling fire!
Explain to the children they have a quest to complete. (SEE BELOW*) Send them off with clip boards and torches - expect some excited screaming. One year, we hid a member of staff in a dark corner as the bear to jump out at them!
After a set time, gather back by the campfire and check their quest by sharing the locations of the clans for them to mark off.
Serve the jacket potatoes.
Finish with hot chocolate and toasting marshmallows.
Home time!

THE QUEST*

This can be as complicated or easy as you want. We set it up like this:
The children have a line drawing map of the section of the school grounds you will be using. We make sure we have orientated them on this before they leave the campfire.
They also have a sheet which has three columns. In the first column are all the symbols they need to find, in the second a clue to their location, and the third is blank for them to write where they found it:

You can make up a symbol in the style of the book using the names of clans found on the map on the endpapers. The Wanderer and the Hidden People could also be included if the children have encountered them in the book.
The clues might be a reference to a geographical feature, e.g. This clan gathers near the mysterious mound… Find this clan near the lone tree…
Make sure you choose a dark corner of the site where you can add 'the bear roams here' - even if you don't have anyone to be a bear, the children will have great fun daring each other to go and look!