Half-Term Nature Activities at Welsh Harp

Apologies I got this information too late for today's activities but here areThursday and Friday:

 

Smartphone Safari

Thursday 27th, 10.30am – 12.00pm & 1.00pm – 2.30pm

Learn how to use your smartphone camera like a pro using simple and fun methods by Jet Black Squares. Bring your smart phone and get ready to explore the Education Centre woods! Ages 8+

 

Nature Fun in the Wild

Friday 28th, 10.30am – 12.00pm & 1.00pm – 2.30pm

Join us for pond dipping and mini-beast hunting in the wilds of the pond and woods at the Education Centre! Ages 5-12.

 

Booking is essential, please contact us on:

Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre

Birchen Grove, NW9 8RY. Follow the signs towards the Garden Centre.

Phone: 07711 701 694

Email: welshharpcentre@thames21.org.uk

 

Further info:

• An adult must attend & supervise children throughout activities.
• Places are limited and booking is essential, please contact us to book and also let us know if you need to cancel your booking.
• Children and adults should wear comfortable outdoor clothing that may get dirty if you wish to come for a walk in the woods.

After School Nature Activities this term for children aged 6-14 years

 

This is good news.  I understand that Thames21 will have a short-term extension (6 months) to January 2022 on the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre, pending a longer term solution.

Children's holiday nature activities at the Welsh Harp Centre

From Thames 21
 
Join us at the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre for Summer Holiday Activities on 14^th, 15^th, 21^st and 22^nd August. Each day we will run fun filled activities for children:

Pond Dipping and Butterfly Hunt, 10.30am – 12pm
Dip in the pond to see what swims below and hunt for the large variety of butterflies that live in the meadow.

Shelter Building, Mini-beast Hunt, 1pm – 2.30pm
Build yourself a shelter in the woodland to hide out and hunt for mini-beasts to see what creeps under logs!

£3 per child per activity session.
Limited spaces so book now!

What you need to know for this activity:
 
An adult must attend & supervise children throughout activities.

Places are limited and booking is essential, please contact us to book and also let us know if you need to cancel your booking.

Please pay in cash on the day. £3 per child per activity session.

Activities suitable for children aged 5-11 years. Children aged 4 and under who are not participating in activities are free of charge.

Children and adults should wear comfortable outdoor clothing that may get dirty.

To book, contact Deb Frankiewicz on:
Phone: 07711 701 694
Email: welshharpcentre@thames21.org.uk

Welsh Harp Half-Term Activity Day - Thursday May 30th

Join us at the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre for Holiday Activities!

Thursday 30th May
Pond Dipping and Mini-beast Hunt, 10.30am – 12pm
Dip in the pond to see what swims below and hunt for mini-beasts to find what creatures live in the woodland.

Shelter Building and Fire Lighting Demonstration, 1pm – 2.30pm
Build yourself a shelter in the woodland and see a fire lighting demonstration using a flint and steel.

£3 per child per activity session.

Limited spaces so book now!

What you need to know for this activity:

• An adult must attend & supervise children throughout activities.
• Places are limited and booking is essential, please contact us to book and also let us know if you need to cancel your booking.
• Please pay in cash on the day. £3 per child per activity session.
• Activities suitable for children aged 5-11 years. Children aged 4 and under who are not participating in activities are free of charge.
• Children and adults should wear comfortable outdoor clothing that may get dirty.
  

To book, contact Deb Frankiewicz on:
Phone: 07711 701 694
Email: welshharpcentre@thames21.org.uk

Green Party champions children's right to access to nature

Since I became ill about a year ago I have suspended my work with primary school pupils engaging with nature in Fryent Country Park LINK but was very pleased when the Green Party passed a motion at last weekend's conference asserting children's right to access to nature.

I have seen for myself how children can become enthralled by contact with nature. I remember one child emerging from the woodland and gazing over the meadows and exclaiming, 'This is like Paradise!'  On another occasion a child was chatting happlily to me as we walked through a meadow and a teacher ran up to ask, 'Was she talking to you?' I replied that we had been having a chat about all the things she had seen. The teacher drew me aside later and told me that the child was an elective mute and had never spoken to an adult in school. 

Natalie Bennett, former leader of the Green Party, moved the motion at Conference and has written about it in the Ecologist LINK. This is part of what she had to say.  I think it fits in very well with the move I have been supporting over recent weeks to make London a National Park City.

--> When I was a small child, five or so, I first went blackberrying in Australia. At the same time, I was taught to find yabbies (freshwater crayfish) in the streams around my grandparents’ house in a national park near Sydney with a piece of meat tied on a string. (A few years later all the yabbies’ disappeared – pesticides, it was said.)

I also collected the shed shells of cicadas, and learnt about metamorphosis. It was also where I learnt to use a crosscut saw, built childish dams across a muddy stream, and to shower under a waterfall.
These are the kinds of experiences that the Texas City of Austin - perhaps a politically unlikely location - has decided should be the right of every child. In 2016, its council, with not a Green Party member on it, unanimously adopted a Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights, guaranteeing its young people the right to many of those activities I so enjoyed as a child.

We’re increasingly understanding that these activities aren’t just fun, aren’t just educational, but are essential for human wellbeing – will develop skills, knowledge and expectations that will take people through a lifetime of better health and wellbeing.

And of course they’ll prepare people for physical activities – develop the practical skills that equip people to be active in a society where many are suffering from obesity, diabetes and other health issues arising from inactivity.

Lack of opportunities and exercise of these activities has been identified as “Nature Deficit Disorder”. It’s something that many children now suffer from. 

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has prepared a major report on children’s need for access to nature, pointing out that as well as the health, wellbeing and skills that time spent in nature provides, its essential that if we are to care for our natural world in the future, coming generations have knowledge of and love for it.

Acknowledging this research, and reality, Green Party members before its spring conference, held in Bournemouth, made a motion on the issue their top policy priority for conference.
In it the party backed the call for access to nature to be recognised as a human right, operating at the international level, but also acknowledged that this is something that cities and local government can implement at a local level.

In many parts of the country Green councillors are already fighting to save local parks and green spaces, from the Sefton Park Meadows and Rimrose Valley Park, to Sunderland and Stoneham.

But the framework of a children’s right to nature, something that’s particularly likely to be denied to those in the poorest communities, that acknowledges also that barriers can be lack of knowledge and opportunity as well as lack of access, is an important additional tool, that you can expect to see wielded for the benefit of our children, and our world.

Harrow College proudly shows the way on Sustainability

It was great to visit Harrow College again today to run an environmental stall for their Sustainability Week.  I encouraged staff and students to fill in an on-line survey to see the impact of their life to see many earth planets their current life style was based on. Unfortunately some were consuming the resources of 3 planets or more, when of course we only have one. The lowest was 2.1 planets.

The awareness raising week is busier than ever as the college website demonstrates:

Sustainability Week is a chance for you to participate in lots of activities and information stands for all students and staff to learn about ways we can do more to preserve the earth’s resources, from bees to water conservation, cycling to waste management.

Activities will be at both campuses as follows:
Monday 23rd March - Harrow Weald campus

• Pond and meadow
• Green Party
• Recycling, Up-cycling, food sourcing and charity collections

Tuesday 24th March - Harrow Weald campus

• Cycling events
• Waste management and recycling
• Beekeeping
• Water conservation
• Resourcefulness/ reducing waste
• Up-cycling, food sourcing and charity collections

Thursday 26th March - Harrow on the Hill campus

• Waste management and recycling
• Green party
• Water conservation
• SWISH event (clothes swapping/ recycling)
• Solar panels
• Up-cycling, food sourcing and charity collections

Friday 27th March - Harrow on the Hill campus

• Recycling/ up-cycling
• Food sourcing
• Charity collections
• Resourcefulness/ reducing waste

Pop along to learn more about Sustainability with Harrow College.

I  was interested to see the progress that has been made on their pond and wildlife area on the Harrow Weald campus which is carefully tended by the students.  John proudly told me about the habitats students have created (see below) and the impressive pond life that was seen over the summer, although apparently the frogs still prefer the pond in the greenhouse.

Greens should get behind Project Wild Thing

This evening, along with other members of LEEF I viewed the film Project Wild Thing that was released today. The film sets out to do for children enjoying nature and the outdoors, what Jamie Oliver did for healthy school meals.

David Bond, concerned that his children are glued to their screens and seldom venture out of the house and the impact that this will have on their future health, decides to market 'nature' in the same way that big corporations market their consumer products.

Getting past this initial irony it soon becomes apparent, despite free advertising space and marketing help, that he cannot possibly hope to match the spending of multimillion multinationals. He sets off on a sticker campaign, slapping a 'WARNING: Material goods may make you fat and depressed' on consumer posters. At Speakers' Corner, heckled by a socialist speaker about the irrelevance of what he is saying to the fight against capitalism, he retorts, getting kids outside and outdoors is one of the best ways of avoiding capitalism.

A range of experts including Susan Greenfield, George Monbiot, Chris Packham and Chris Rose give their views; the latter arguing that it is not enough to take kids out to nature: you have to enable them to engage with it.

There are several poignant moments. In one a 10 year old boy takes Bond to the only tiny patch of green grass on his estate, and to the site of another larger patch which is now being built on. He says that if you play ball games where there they are forbidden 'you will get an ASBO'.

Visit the island of Eigg he finds that children there are still influenced by advertising and fixated on the screen, but the difference is that outside play is much more accessible. One Eigg Primary School school child remarks that with outdoor play 'the risk is part of the fun'.

However 'risk' , or rather adult fear of risk, seems from the interviews with adults to be the main reason why children aren't allowed out. Apart from the usual 'stranger danger' fear of cars and traffic is the main reason chidlren are kept in.  As Anna Porch from LEEF said in the discussion 'the freedom that cars have givenm to adults has been taken from their kids'.

The film is well worth seeing but most usefully used as  a discussion starting point in community organisations, parent evenings at school, or campaign meetings. The Wild Network LINK of organisations supporting the campaign have issued the following manifesto:

The Wild Network exists to champion and support connection with nature and wildness in children and young people.

The Wild Network mission is to support children, parents and guardians of children to roam free, play wild and connect with nature.

We believe all children should have the right to access the outdoors for play, learning, expression and development of healthy mind and body.

We encourage, provoke, nudge, support, innovate and campaign for children, kids and young folk to get up and outside.

• To wander freely
• To look up and around
• To find wonder, awe and empathy in all life
• To nurture, steward and protect
• To run, jump, climb, crawl and explore the world on our doorsteps
• To seek imagination in wildness
• To find inventiveness in the woods.
• To grow happy healthy minds and bodies.
• To find comfort in solitude.
• To become truly connected.

 Roam Free. Play Wild

You can sign up to the manifesto as an organisation or an individual on the website.

A photo-tour of the new Chalkhill Park

I had a tour of the new Chalkhill Park this morning. I wonder if it will get called Chalkhenge? Although not yet open the park is being used by local residents after school and at weekends. The ceremonial opening is on June 8th but the builders' fencing around the site is likely to be removed on Friday May 10th.

More discoveries in Fryent Country Park

Hot on the heels of the discovery by Year 1 pupils from Oliver Goldsmith Primary School of a water stick insect, Ranatra linearis, a few weeks ago, another class also found something unusual last week.

The pond stick insect, confusingly, is not really a stick insect and Year 4s from Michael Sobell Sinai Primary School found a worm that is not a worm.

They found a slow worm which is not a worm and not a snake. It is a lizard which through evolution has lost its legs.  The children found an adult (below) and a juvenile in a seldom disturbed section of Fryent Country Park. As ths is a protected species we will try and make sure it remains undisturbed.