When you receive a call from the headmaster of the school where your kids are during the day, you almost get a heart attack thinking about what your kids did do wrong or what happened to them (at least I do).
But luckily it wasn't about my kids when she called me two weeks ago. She had a last minute idea, she hoped I could help with. She wanted to make a fingerprint-tree with the kids before the opening of the new schoolarea that they had been building on for a long time. Offcourse I liked to help and allready the next day I started working on a tree painting on a big wooden plate. The only guideline I received from the headmaster was that I had to put in the logo from the school and daycare, but other than that I was free to paint it as I liked. At first I thought about just painting the tree with two signs nailed on it. But during the proces I thought it could be fun to make the tree hollow, so a hollow tree it became. While painting I was on a videocall with my mom who asked why I didn't put an animal inside the hollow tree. I didn't have to think long and a sweet fox was sleeping in the sun that was shining on the tree. As soon as the fox was finished I decided to put a robin on the daycare sign and a butterfly on the schoolsign. After that, the tree was done for now.
Now the really fun part started, cause the tree was still looking like a tree during fall. The tree had to become "livstræet" (the tree of live) and that's where the kids came in. During two days, around 300 children came to see me and put their fingerprint or hand on the tree to represent the leaves. And the painting was done just in time before the big opening only few hours after!!!
To my surprise the children sang the song livstræets krone around the painting at the opening and the tree became the symbol of fellowship on the school. I think it's really special! And I'm honoured to be a part of it! I enjoyed working on this special project and I think the children also loved it. Ever since this project lots of children come running up to me when I'm picking up my kids from school to say hi and even give me hugs.
The local newspaper wrote a nice article about the opening with a part about my tree, it can be found by following this link (it is in danish):
Byggeri til 51 millioner kroner indviet: Børns fingeraftryk på livstræet sikrer fællesskab | viborg-folkeblad.dk
Today livstræets song is stuck in my head so I share it with all of you!!!!
Greetings Katinka