Squirrels YouShape: Capturing the Castle

We started off with an open-ended session using lots of cardboard boxes that Squirrels collected from home and brought in. To begin, we read the book ‘Not a Box’, then let the Squirrels explore the boxes we had set up around the space.

The Squirrels quickly turned these into a street of houses.

Some wanted to stay in the newly built homes whilst others found smaller boxes to become cars that drove up and down the street. 

Someone had the bright idea to introduce a train and train station. We even had our own post box on the street.

We took photos of the Squirrels playing to share with them later. At the end, we asked them what they wanted to do next. They said they wanted to turn the different houses into one big house, they wanted to create a castle! 

In our next session, we brought in some maps and pictures of castles to help spark the Squirrels’ imaginations. They used these to inspire their own drawings of castles.

Different Squirrels had different things that they thought were most exciting about castles.

One was really keen on having a big moat and a drawbridge. Some talked about what happens in a castle and drew pictures of banquets and balls.

This got them excited about costumes and what people would wear in a castle. They started planning what food they could serve at a banquet and who they could invite.

We completed the Lead badge over a number of sessions, so that everyone got to explore what they were interested in.

We started by building castles and the Squirrel who wanted a moat was in charge of ‘moat design’. He explained what a moat was and that enemies could fall into the moat if they attacked a castle!

This prompted a game, invented by the Squirrels, where they took it in turns to defend and besiege the castle. If a defender tagged a besieger, they had to lie in the moat. If a besieger made it over the moat without being tagged, they could take the castle. The defenders won, but this was mainly because the besiegers were very excited to get to lie in the moat (made of blue fabric surrounding the cardboard castle).

We also visited a local castle and enjoyed looking at its turret and exploring the dungeon. There were lots of different coloured flags flying in the castle, which excited everyone as it looked like our Squirrel flag back at the drey.

The Squirrels all drew pictures of the castle when we were there.

We visited the kitchen to see how they could have made food and, based on that, the Squirrels invented their menu for the YouShape Banquet.

We invited the Squirrels’ loved ones to come and join us in our cardboard castle for a grand banquet.

We painted the cardboard castle the Squirrels had made and added another turret.

We brought in some of the foods that the Squirrels had identified could be made in the castle kitchen and laid them out on ‘banquet tables’ (all the meeting place tables arranged in one big row).

We invited the Squirrels to come dressed up. In attendance, there were Kings and Queens, Knights, Princesses and two dragons. We gave out the YouShape badges as part of a Knight-ing ceremony.

The Squirrels told their loved ones about the different aspects of the YouShape experience that they’d most enjoyed. For example, one girl told her sister all about the moat and they planned to build a boat around their Wendy house at home.

Another Squirrel explained turrets to his Mum and Dad. They said they’d take him to Andover Castle, which has lots of turrets to explore.

Another Squirrel told his grandma how all the banquet food was cooked at the bottom of the castle and how the kitchen staff worked downstairs where there was the biggest fireplace (like we’d seen during our castle visits).

It was so lovely to see and hear all the different ways that the Squirrels had been inspired.

Overall, we spent about two months on the Squirrels YouShape Award, but we could have spent a lot longer.

It also fed into lots of other badges, like Brilliant Builders and Super Chef.

Instead of giving those badges at the same time, we will now build on what we did for each badge with the Squirrels, so that they can choose how they’d like to take things further.

It has really inspired us all to think about how we plan our programmes and made us all remember how exciting castles are as well. It also made us appreciate how lucky we are to live in a country where we can celebrate our history and visit lots of amazing castles.