Dunraven Fair Brings Visitors from Away

This week, Adam Shaughnessy and his daughter, May, will be joining us. Adam is an author, educator, and grants writer from Waterford, CT. We worked together at Kids' First in Wellesley, MA, where I introduced him to the joys of adventure play.

Adam moved on to teach in CT elementary schools. During summers, he directed Red Dragon Adventures to showcase the live roleplaying mysteries he was writing. He eventually moved into grants writing for non-profits, as he turned his hand to writing children's books.

One of his mysteries grew into a delightful series called The Unbelievable FIB. I recommend this series to our readers -- and can say that I was there when Mr. Fox began his enigmatic journey. I still have a copy of the mysteries Adam wrote in 1997, and am very proud to have played a role in his creative journey.

The illustration above shows how the FIB (Fantasy Investigation Bureau) first began, as a spoof of the TV series The X Files. Adam drew this in 1997 for our program, as a self-portrait for the Kids' First summer program.  We offered ten adventures that summer!

Adam's website is here for more information!

As a fellow Dragonmage, Adam will be teaming up with me to play various characters in our mystery. His daughter May will be joining our small group of detectives to enter the Dunraven Fair.

My portrait from the 1997 summer of adventures is posted here, too, for your entertainment. This was before Dragon's Eye became Dragon's Eye, which happened around 1998 or 1999. Dragons were still front and center in my concept of adventure play, and this self-portrait shows that the Asian dragons of water and wind have always been foremost in my mind.

"Dunraven Fair" Starts on Monday, July 1

The Summer 2024 season begins on Monday, July 1 with "The Dunraven Fair". This mystery features a visit to a goblin trade fair, where our detectives will exchange wares they make for the magical ones the merchants are selling. 

Our crafts this week include tiny dolls that represent the disguises our team will don as they enter the fair. They may go as goblins, fairies, Tomtes, elves, dwarves, wizards, witches or other magical beings. The trade fair is known for its danger to humans, so we'll be dodging freezing yarnballs and mortal traps as we make our way to the trading grounds.

Our day begins at 9 AM, with pick up at 4:00 PM. After hours run from 4 to 5:15 PM on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. There are no after hours on Fridays.

This is a short week, with a break on Thursday for the July 4 holiday. The main portion of the mystery, including the trading, will finish by Wednesday at 4. Everyone will end the week with one artifact they made and two that they traded. Those who come on Friday will have the opportunity to trade or make one more artifact!

Please visit the "First Day Reminders" tab to review what's needed for each week! The address of the school is listed there, as well as things the children will need each day.

2024 Summer Preparations: Raven King and Moonrabbits

May is a busy time for Dragon's Eye Adventures, as summer mysteries come into better focus. The research through books and Internet shifts to the construction of magical artifacts and characters that the Detectives will meet. Here is a glimpse of two of the projects that are underway.

Dun Raven Fair (Session II) is a four-day adventure taking place from July 1-3 and 5. The detectives will visit a goblin fair in Dun Raven, Wales, to trade for magical artifacts with the merchants at the fair. Here is a link for more information about the story.

Here is the Raven King, who rules over the fair from the ghostly ruin of an old castle. He is a shapeshifting master of all magics and ruler of the twilight realms. Past detectives have met with the Raven King, who is fond of a magical cup of tea.

Our detectives will meet teacup trolls, Tomtes, fairies, goblins, fire-juggling skeletons and all kinds of other magical beings at the fair. We will be making and trading artifacts with the merchants at the fair, so this will be a very special week.

 

 The Moonrabbits (Session IV) is a five-day adventure taking place from July 15-19, 2024. The team will undertake a search for the twelve missing moon daughters of Chinese mythology. Here is a link to that story.

Making twelve main characters takes a bit of work, so I have been making one or two a day. The detectives will make their own Moonrabbit during the week -- so we should have a wonderful shot of all of those chaotic rabbits by the end of our week -- assuming we can get them to hold still for the photo!

The Dragon's Eye Adventures Facebook page will have a few more shots of the Raven King and the Moonrabbits. Visit that here.

Teacup Trolls - Recap April 2024

April vacation brought a week of crazy fun to the Durham Community school. Seven detectives took on the Rat Queen's request to investigate a group of trolls threatening to invade her sanctuary in the sewers of London. Stories of the trolls' immense size and fearsome tusks turned out to be exaggerations. A clever ruse to distract the giant, shadowy trolls allowed an unexpected duo to sneak past the clamoring monsters to reveal what may be the cutest of "enemies" the detectives have ever seen.

Trolls as tiny as teacups, desperately using shadowpuppets to make themselves look big and fierce.

A parlay soon commenced, and the team discovered the trolls were in need of their help. The old ettin, oldest of the old, was in need of a special tea to keep her from falling into an enchanted sleep. Losing the Oldest of the Old would slowly unravel all of the ancient troll magics keeping the land and all of nature safe, so saving Crona became the new quest of the week.

The detectives set out to find the ingredients for this special brew of tea, led by the visions of Mica the Teacup Troll. 

Cloudy with a spot of tea -- an apt description of the rest of the case!

We had a week of hilarious encounters with infamous tea drinkers, plagued by little clouds that seemed to follow the team wherever they went. Flaming arrows surrounded our detectives so many times, they jumped into the round pit on the playground any time we went outside.

The Troll Hunters weren't the only ones using clouds and flaming arrows, though. Susanno-o, the kami of storms, challenged the detectives as they tried to meet his sister, Amaterasu the sun goddess. Dian Mu, the Mother of Lightning challenged them at the garden of Baihu the White Tiger from China. Zephirino the Gentle Wind of the West brought them an unexpected boon from his Grecian home.

Our team bravely tried a variety of (decaffeinated) teas -- a lovely lemon-infused green tea with Bodhidarma Daruma in Japan, a spiced ginger green tea with Baihu, a warm cuppa Chai with the Rat Queen and her Bees. 

At each tea, the team gathered the ingredients they needed to heal Crona: First light of Amaterasu, First Sip of Bodhidarma Daruma's morning tea, Three Twigs of Healing Tea from the White Tiger, Fire Honey from the Rat Queen's Secret Garden, and a Whisp of Wind from Zepherino to cool the tea to the perfect temperature.

They also gathered a twig spoon, a teacup, and eventually a Teacup Troll of their own.

All of this came together at the peak of the highest mountain in Norway. Of course, one last cloud came to bother them first, followed by three smaller and smaller clouds. Our brotherly Troll Hunters brought their mom -- and she wasn't happy that the detectives had defeated her sons. The team had to meet her challenge as well, before they could convince her to reconsider her troll-hunting traditions.

It turns out that cute trumps everything when it comes to hunting trolls. Our team showed Gria that trolls are sentient beings with warm hearts and sweet dispositions. Mica and Flint invited her to tea, and the melting of hearts commenced for three brothers and their mom.

Crona was saved with a timely spot of tea -- and biscuits were enjoyed by all! Along with fireworks. The dragons love fireworks. They came from all corners of Durham, ME, to celebrate our final victory.

Out of game (OOG), each detective crafted the Teacup Troll to match the teacups they brought from home. Pictures of these trolls may be found on the Dragon's Eye Facebook page here.

In game (IG), the tiny trolls were so grateful for the detectives' help saving Crona that they followed them home, teacup and all. They may return for future adventures, providing a spot of troll magic, tea and travel by whirlpool. That spoon they collected creates the perfect whorl for travel.

 

Teacup Trolls Preparations

Preparations for next week's mystery continue, with more trolls. This gentleman has a tree growing out of his head -- a sign that he has recently woken up from a long nap.

I am enjoying the needlefelting. It works well with the felt sewing we already do at Dragon's Eye. I am not sure how kid-friendly the art is, due to the extra-sharp, barbed needles that break. 

My team and I will work on slow, careful work -- hopefully producing both patience jewels and successful trolls! I will have backup patterns, though.

Some of the other characters for the story are also under development this week. The Rat Queen from the sewers of London (from the case called "The Market at Wits' End") will be joining us. She heard there was tea in this adventure and just insisted on joining us.

Two of the Queen's Guards will be joining her entourage. I have a bearskin hat that was given to me by a dear friend, many years ago, so it was useful in gaining the slightly shaggy yet orderly look of the hats. The first layer of the hats were felted, and then the fur was applied, taking my new-found skills to the next level. This is promising for future Dragon's Eye fur-babies.

Teacup Trolls for 2024 April Vacation

Trolls are a favorite topic for research, and I have pages and pages of notes from fifteen to twenty different sources in my library. Somewhere in those notes, I jotted down a comment from a book that escapes my memory, about trolls as small as teacups. This stray comment became a mental note about teacup trolls -- clearly a topic worth exploring with the detectives.

This April, this note will become a full-blown adventure for detectives in grades 3 through 8. We will be running the mystery at Durham Community School, in the Art and Makers rooms. The program runs from Monday through Friday, April 15-19, from 9 AM to 4 PM. There is still room to enroll in the program!

This week, I have been designing the trolls for our adventure. My goal was to create trolls that look like stones that awoke and walked out of the forest, down the mountain, or up from the sea. We will be trying our hand at needle felting -- a craft I've been intending to explore for some time. I'm pleased with the design so far. She fits perfectly into the palm of the hand -- or a teacup. She's a bit mossy from her time of sleep. And she has runic designs carved into the "stone." Add some tusks and a tail, a few hagstones, and she'll be ready to meet our detectives!

Winter Wk A 2024 -- The Winter Queen -- Recap

Dragon's Eye Adventures began the 2024 season with The Winter Queen.We spent February vacation in the art and STEM rooms of the Durham Community School, as part of the Freeport RSU5 Community Programs. Eight dedicated sleuths joined our staff for a story based on Scottish myths about the Winter and Summer Queen.

Over the four days of our adventure, the detectives examined multiple versions of the stories about the Cailleach Bheura (Ky-lee-ach Vee-reh), the Winter Queen, and her eight sisters, who are also Cailleachs. In some stories, the Cailleach is a wise old woman who helps her community. In others, she and her sisters are fierce storm goddesses, who live half the year as raging winter queens and the other half as white serpents who bring spring flowers and summer and fall harvests.

As is the case with so many of the myths I love, this is another story about the constellations Orion and Scorpio. The year is divided into two halves--winter and summer -- with each constellation ruling the sky in their respective season. 

If you rise at 4 AM in Feb, you will see Scorpio in the southern skies of Maine, with the red star Antares sparkling between the trees on the horizon. Scorpio will rise earlier and earlier, ruling the summer skies the way Orion rules the fall and winter.

Our Ground Hog's Day was originally a day dedicated to the White Serpent -- who gradually became the Summer Queen known as St. Bride (Bree-deh) in Scotland, and St. Bridget in Ireland. Her response to the sun determined and early or late spring, in the same way as the Ground Hog.

Later versions of this story introduce Angus Og as the Summer King searching for the imprisoned Bride. In other versions, there is a Winter and Summer King who fight over Bride, with the Summer Queen winning her hand at Beltane. Our story focused on the earlier story of the two queens.

Our wonderful team of detectives learned all of this in bits and pieces over the week, uncovering new discoveries each day as they followed Molly the Scotty dog to Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the Scotland highlands. Molly lost her voice, but she was able to communicate with her tale and her head, and the maps she brought with her.

She led them to the mountain top, where they saw the swirling storm of the eight Cailleachs and the nine Storm Wolves, circling the mountain again and again and again. A powerful spell kept them guarding the Cailleach's winter abode, where she kept her summer prisoner.

An white-tailed sea eagle named Albi (played by James) was blown back to the detectives by the storm wolves. Our team healed the eagle and soon gained its trust, learning about a secret tunnel accessed by the Corryvreckan Whirlpool off to the southwest.

This is not the first time our detectives have traveled via whirlpool! It will not be the last, either, with trolls on the agenda for April vacation.

One of the more hilarious encounters of the week was with a Serpent lock inside the tunnels, guarding a door. This off-the-page moment involved a question by the detectives that took the serpent by surprise: Had the serpent ever had a break.

Breaks were a point of discussion for our group this week. James had his first job as a Program Assistant, and getting breaks is important for staff but puzzling to those who just want to hang out with one another during our breaks.

This serpent was already puzzled by the detectives. When puzzled or confused, the serpent grew another head, so it could consider the situation with more care. Before we knew it, the serpent lock had a thousand heads puzzling over this idea of a break, and something called a vacation.

Needless to say, the detectives had discovered a very effective bargaining chip. Let them through, and they would take up the cause of breaks with the Cailleach, promising the serpent something it had never had (along with a thank you card, and a trophy for guarding the door so effectively for thousands of years).

Our team solved each problem they encountered with determination and grit. They threw snowy yarnballs back at the Storm Wolves and Cailleachs who tried to stop them. They listened to their Secret Keeper birds and other creatures for bits of advice. They deciphered the runes on the old maps, and treated Nessy and Nelly with great respect, building their courage, compassion, wisdom, respect, and honor into a pile of jewels that couldn't fit into the jewel bag.

Their paper airplanes soured to great heights (and didn't come down). The dice and crackers were stacked to great heights, and the wands balanced magically on one end.

This wasn't on the page (i.e. anywhere in the adventure) -- just our fun during free time! We had a great week, full of sewing, games and story -- and laughter. I'm always delighted by how much we laugh at the funny things that happen along the way.

It felt amazing to be back, telling stories to detectives who dive right into the mystery with the same enthusiasm James and I have. It's really special, this funny little program. I traveled all the way to New Orleans for a national conference on Out of School Time, and didn't find another like it.

There are a few, but ours is extra special. And I thank each and every detective, each family, each staff member for joining me once again in this delightful conjuration of story and fun. James was wonderful as a Dragonmage. His years of experience allowed him to enter into the magic-making side of things seemlessly, and his relationships with our detectives made the week extra special.

Thank you to Chris Guerette from RSU5 Community Programs! Thank you to the Durham Community School for the creative spaces -- we were very much at home in the art and STEM rooms. Visit the Dragon's Eye Adventures Facebook page for images of the Ice Crowns and balancing tricks!

Introducing James Jackman - Feb 2024

James Jackman will be joining me as a Program Assistant for the February vacation program. Here is what he has written about himself:

James is fifteen years old. He was born right here in Maine. All his life, he has taken care of his brothers and his friends, keeping an eye on them, playing with them and just having a good time with them. James has been good with kids his whole life, and is very patient with them.

He also knows a lot about Dragon's Eye. He first went to Dragon's Eye when he was in first grade, and has been going ever since.

Here are some of my observations about James, which support everything he has written about himself.

James joined the program in first grade and I learned quickly what a wonderful sense of humor he had.  He dove right into adventures, sometimes too quickly -- yet we learned that his quick thinking could get him out of as much trouble as he found!

He has been a valuable team member, with a wonderful sense of humor and an admirable ability to rally other children in creative yet free-wheeling ways. His friendships last -- he has built them in and out of the program, and Dragon's Eye has benefited from his community building.

James has built many art skills during his time with the program. He was one of my chaos sewers when he first tested his ability with needle and thread. The stitches were wonky, yet somehow, he managed to create a pouch that was still open, so it could hold things. We learned to admire those beautiful stitches because they worked!

With patience and perseverance, James built his sewing and drawing skills summer after summer. When his younger brother came to the program, he encouraged him with tales about his personal struggle to tame the chaos of tangling threads. He patiently helped the kids at his table.

James has asked if he could draw during breaks in the program, the way Oliver did. I look forward to sharing his designs! His artwork over the years has always had a wonderful sense of color and humor, as these photos show.

James is also a skilled D&D player. He has been organizing impromptu tabletop games with our detectives at the lunch break for years.

James will no doubt bring his sense of humor to the roleplaying we leaders do -- I am looking forward to his improv. I think he'll instinctively have both a sense of timing, suspense and humor that keeps our adventurers on their toes. I am also grateful to have his skills with yarnballs on my side -- the team will have to work to take him out of the games!

February Break with the Storm Wolves

 "The Winter Queen" calls our detectives to the Highlands of Scotland for a seasonal adventure exploring the age-old battle between Winter and Summer. There is still room in this mystery for grades 3 through 8. The program runs on Tuesday, Feb. 20 through Friday, Feb. 23, from 9 AM to 4 PM at Durham Community School.

One of the pleasures of running adventure programs is the list of tasks I must accomplish before the story begins. Topping the list this week has been:

• Make three Snowdrops worthy of a fairy tale
• Draw a puzzle map of the Well of Life in the Green Islands of the West
• Craft a doll made of winter wheat with a Golden Crystal of the Sun

Here is a look at one of those tasks. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next on the list, some armor worthy of a Battle Boar.

February Vacation 2024, Session A: The Winter Queen

Our first mystery of the 2024 season is The Winter Queen. This is a four-day mystery, running from Tuesday through Friday of February vacation week.

The Winter Queen rides the skies on her white Battle Boar, accompanied by her Storm Wolves. Together, they bring fierce storms to the mountains of Scotland. Can the Detectives discover how to free her summer prisoner, or will winter's bite eat away the prospects of spring?

A story based on Scottish and Irish myths of the Cailleach Bhuer.

We will be making Ice Crowns.

April Vacation 2024, Session B: Teacup Trolls

Our 2024 April vacation mystery will involve a five-day adventure called Teacup Trolls. Monday is a regional holiday, but the program will run on that day, as well as the next four days.

Trolls are a favorite theme in Scandinavian folklore. They are inspired by shapes in nature that mimic creatures -- eyes, noses and chins jutting out of mountain sides; far off trees that appear to be walking across the land; or sleepy boulders with the shapes of animals and people.

Trolls may be as large as mountains or as small as a teacup. Dragon's Eye will explore the world of Teacup Trolls through an adventure of very small proportions. Travel will be fun, as we dive into tiny whirlpools in teacups, visiting other tea drinkers and legendary whirlpools around the globe,

We will construct our own Teacup Trolls. Please bring a vintage teacup for your troll to enjoy! The trolls prefer their cups to have a little second-hand patina -- flowers are fine for some trolls, while others may prefer one of the brown and ugly varieties. It's your troll's choice!

Summer 2024, Session I: The Windhorse

The first mystery of the Summer 2024 season is The Windhorse.

Mongolian legend and history come to life as the detectives try to prevent the Windhorse (Spirit Banner) of Genghis Khan from falling into the wrong claws. This adventure will examine the challenges of waging Peace when the Winds of War are blowing strong.

Can a mythical winged horse help our team? Only if they can reach it before it's spirited away.

We will be making Spirit Banners and shadowpuppets. Please bring a white sheet so we can construct our own Ger (a Mongolian yurt). The sheets need to be white for the shadow puppetry.