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1106 Educators providing Nature courses

Friends of Burgess Park

friends of burgess park

Weekly litter pick Mondays 7:30-9.30am and Thursdays 6:15-8pm July to September 2020. Meet at the picnic benches at Chumleigh Gardens. Gloves and litter pickers provided or bring your own. More information here. Read the blog. Photo of Grebe swimmingLaunch of Southwark nature action conservation volunteers Dave Clark provided online training in recognising birdsong. He has an MSc in Ornithology from Birmingham University and is particularly interested in the interaction between birds and humans. Read his blog about birds in Burgess Park From Africa to the Old Kent Road and follow him on Twitter @daveclark77. Burgess Park contains a mosaic of locally important habitats including areas of rough grass, wildflower ‘meadows’, hedges and patches of bushes, scrub and trees; and a lake and some small ponds with reeds. Regular visitors include House Martins, Swifts, Blackcaps, Reed Warblers and Whitethroats. Other birds include House Sparrow, Starling, Greenfinch, and typical garden species like the Robin and Blue Tit. The lake has several different species of waterbirds, including three species of geese – Canada, Egyptian and Greylag. Tuesday 3 March 2020, 7pm, Theatre Deli, Wells Way SE5 Book ticket. white letter hairstreakHelp with species’ habitats and nature conservation in Southwark parks: carry out surveys, help with planting, dig ponds, map wildlife sightings to target habitat action, photograph wildlife and habitats etc. Launch event includes talks from Simon Saville, Butterfly Conservation and Jon Best, Southwark Ecology Officer, films and discussions. Find out more.

Forest Schooling Uk

forest schooling uk

London

BushKraft Forest School CIC (Community Interest Company) is a NON profit organisation working with people of all ages and abilities. We also work with and in partnership with other organisations including schools, social care and charities. A CIC is usually formed from people with a passion to want to try and alleviate problems that have identified in there local area or area of expertise. BushKraft is no different and wants to tackle the social issues, build confidence in everyone and improve peoples opportunities and situations. One of our skills is keeping families together and promoting well being, positive communication, positiveness and bonding as a unit rather than individuals. Most companies are formed to make money for the directors and share holders. A CIC is formed to help the community around its existence. When you pay a Community Interest Company you are helping others by us putting our profits back into the community. A CIC has to do this like a charity and is regulated with rules from the government and HMRC. Traditional forest school is not by far a new concept. Outdoor leaning and its benefits have been around since 19th century. One of many outdoor educators was Baden Powel who in 1907 formed the scouting organisation which has grown massively into what it is today. Traditional forest school is child led. This does not mean we just let them run wild and boss us around, but we do not set a specific curriculum. We facilitate their learning at a speed and style that suits the individual. Our high ratio's of adult to child allows children to learn and explore the woodland and nature around them. Our mission is to get children outside into nature enjoying themselves, playing with other children. Over the years technology is so advanced, (games consoles get "virtual" reality and mobile phones are really mini computers.) Children are spending less time outdoors especially in the winter months. Although we are not against technology we strongly believe in a child's right to play, explore, take risks, and be part of the natural world around them. Forest school is based more on the process of learning than it is on the content. This means instead of planning each session to the nearest minute, children can go off as things take their interest. More often than not as Forest leaders our planned sessions end up completely unplanned as the children explore nature.

Vanessa Potter

vanessa potter

London

Thanks for finding me here. I’m a self-experimenting author, speaker and wellness advocate, but it wasn’t always that way… On October 1st 2012 I sat in a hospital waiting room staring at a white notice board. When I’d arrived, the letters had been visible, but over time they’d started to fade. Punctuation marks dissolved, as if wiped off by a zealous cleaner. Every blink washed away more of my sight. Within 72 hours I was blind and paralysis had snaked up my body, leaving numbness in its wake. Losing two of my senses was terrifying and I didn’t know if I’d see my children again. For a while I lost connection with the outer world and my future was uncertain. Slowly my visual system rebooted, but the world didn’t look like it should. Grey wispy shapes swirled and eerie lines jiggled on the horizon. None of it made any sense. Over time I listened to the more subtle cues my body transmitted and learnt new ways to adapt. Months later when I started to feel, rather than see, the colour red and when blue objects fizzed and spat like a lit sparkler, my curiosity was ignited. I set out on a mission to better understand the incredible resilience and healing power of my mind. It was a journey that led to collaborations with scientists, my first book, Patient H69: The Story of my Second Sight, a TEDx talk and then a second book, Finding My Right Mind: One Woman’s Experiment to put Meditation to the Test. Nature played a huge part in my year-long recovery, so in 2021 I co-founded ParkBathe, a citizen science, green health initiative in collaboration with Derby University. The project encourages people who are wellness sceptics to experience a 1-hour version of forest bathing in urban parks and is funded by the National Lottery. Forest bathing is simply walking mindfully in nature while absorbing the woodland atmosphere via the senses. As the project is part of a research study, walkers are invited to wear heartrate (HRV) monitors which record their stress levels before and after each session. This provides each person with an individualised measure of the wellbeing benefits. Get the whole story and listen to interviews with walkers, scientists and nature guides on the ParkBathe podcast. I am partially sighted and live in London, UK, with husband and two children.