This weekend the Clyde room has been filled with kids since Friday evening. We’ve had 6 events over the last 3 days. One Friday, three Saturday and two Sunday. All the tickets were booked except two so a very good turn-up this year. The last booking was even done 7.30 on the Sunday morning so that is quite incredible. I haven’t experienced anything like it. So many last minute bookings because that was not the only one. It’s amazing. We realized earlier on the week that we had space for another 3 kids for every event. Initially we had 15 tickets available each event but we had room for 18 children. Thursday, the day before the first event, we posted on Facebook and Twitter that we had another 18 spaces to fill out. And as I mentioned only 2 tickets were not booked. Again, THAT’S AMAZING!

The preparation for the event was worth it. I had to cut broom ends for the broomsticks and other not so fun jobs to make this happen but seeing the joy on the kids’ faces was worth all the hard and boring work.

The events were called Mugwort’s Magical School of Curious Creatures – a real tongue twister. The kids had to go through a set of activities in order to graduate. They had to make wands, broomsticks, jack-o-lanterns and potions. Then before the graduation ceremony they would have a flying lesson.
The graduation ceremony was a little thing that happened around the fire. Miss Mugwort had an envelope she would put in a cauldron separate from the fire. If the kids would graduate the fire would change different colors. While the envelope was burning the kids would have to do spells and wave their wands. Fortunately, we didn’t have any kids who didn’t graduate so it has been a very good year. We ended up making a wee sketch before the ceremony where I would have to speak Danish and Laura would translate. The kids liked it but they also really thought i couldn’t speak English. They were afraid to say anything to me until they realized I did speak English. This girl came up to me and said, “I actually thought you were from another country!” … Well, I am… However, I do know how to speak English 😉
As a graduation snack they had marshmallows and then we went to the bat cave to hear Miss Mugwort’s stories and have a cup of hot chocolate.

At first I thought it would be a very long weekend. And it has. I’ve had some long hours at the office in New Lanark but the most important thing was that I really did have a lot of fun. I love storytelling and when we got the idea of using my Danish “skills” I was excited. Moreover, we were blessed with a couple of volunteers who spend most of their weekend here which I think is really cool.

All in all a really good weekend.
Not the most wildlifey blog this week I’ll admit, but taking care of dragons and hatching rare Danish dragon eggs is hard work so this is what you’ll get from me this time.

Carina Marcussen –  Volunteer Assistant Ranger, Scottish Wildlife Trust
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