As well as beavering away on exciting new collaborations and fundraising efforts, spring has seen us out and about in schools with our Learning From The Land project. The offshoot from our activity in 2024, is supported by Suffolk Community Foundation and East Suffolk Council and has enabled us to work with a new cohort of children from 6 local schools.
Recent sessions have been visiting Holton, Kelsale and Edgar Sewter Primary schools, working with pupils from reception all the way up to Year 6!
Our director, Carrie has been working with some of our brilliant team of practitioners, including Kasia Posen, Gaina Dunsire, Jon Tyler and Jannine Parry, to explore the sensory aspects of soil, the milage of our breakfasts, and the importance of diversity in hedgerows, farms and food systems!
Having such experienced practitioners enables us to welcome parents and cares in to sessions too, building opportunity for our pupils to explore new ideas with their family, in a way school is not always able to provide.
One of our participating schools gave us this feedback from a recent session:
‘We have found the support from Natural Habitat to be really impactful…capturing the children’s attention and engaging them purposefully. The children have learnt about things that would not be covered in our usual curriculum, and this has been really powerful. The children have been enthusiastic about their sessions and parents that were able to come in and support have been amazed that we have been given this opportunity.’
One of the exciting things about the way we are working in these sessions, is children are provided with the opportunity to work alongside really varied professionals; all who support nature and connecting to it, in their own individual way.
Kasia’s sensory exploration of soil provided children with an accessible way in to discover a complex, but vital topic. Getting 30 5yr olds, to delve their hands in soil samples, and notice how each sample is different; in texture, content, moisture, smell and colour, is a sure fired way to bring joy to any afternoon!
‘It smells gooood!’
On the other end of the spectrum, Gaina has been helping older pupils tot up the miles their breakfast has travelled, with one pupil totalling nearly 13,000miles for her alone! Sharing insight into the small swaps that can make a massive difference in to our food miles and therefor our planet. These sessions have also extended understanding of local food crops, useful plants such as nitrogen fixing beans and peas and how to grown our own food.
We have also been able to share the wonders of our partner site, Wakelyns Farm via these sessions. Building awareness of this hidden gem in our landscape, biodiverse farming approaches and agroforestry.
‘I learnt a new word today – agroforestry.’
‘I had no idea that farms could look like that!’
The month of May will see us deliver our final Learning From the Land session, before the summer properly kicks off. We have some other developments of the horizon and are in the process of looking volunteers to support our expanding programme.
We will be posting more about this opportunity to our website soon, but in the meantime, if you or someone you know might be interested in our work, do get in touch by e
mailing: info@naturalhabitat.org.uk for more details.
