children and nature
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Nature Notes
On Watership Down. Books, words and wildlife have always gone hand in hand for me; from the small brown Observer’s Book of Birds Grandad gifted me, and the pocket money Punchbowl Farm books I discovered in my local Oxfam shop, to The Wind in the Willows that mapped the chalkstream Moors of Pangbourne for me, […]
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Nature Notes
A Dip in the Water. It’s not perhaps the first wildlife-activity that springs to mind, mid-winter. But I’ve an article to write (for spring) and I need refreshing – so the girls and I go pond dipping. We take my youngest daughter’s ‘bugnoculars’ (a clever little watertight box with dual magnifying eyepieces on the top), […]
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Nature Notes
Wild Writing On Freeman’s Marsh, for Hungerford Literary Festival, 14 children have come seeking literary inspiration from nature. We begin by tuning in our senses, discussing the smell of dogs’ paws and listening for the thin, needling call of redwings arriving from the frozen north. And then we are out with our new notebooks, collapsing […]
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Nature Notes
Wild Children, Wild Words. It is a truth that ought to be universally acknowledged, that kids need nature and nature needs kids – otherwise, it’ll be the end of us all. And although I’ve heard things from children that alarm me (what’s a cuckoo? how do badgers swim underwater?) there is plenty to gladden the […]
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Nature Notes
A Month in the Country … For the month of June, in a new, simple and innovative campaign, The Wildlife Trusts challenged us all to commit ‘random acts of wildness’ on a daily basis – and so began 30 Days Wild. What a lovely gift of a thing to do. We accepted the challenge with […]
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Nature Notes
Eels in the Classroom If, like me, you can remember the Nature Table at school, you may lament its perceived loss: much is said about how removed children are now from Nature. Yet there are imaginative teachers and organisations that realize what’s at stake if children are not immersed in nature. Which is why, instead […]