Over the past four years, our work has taken us to every school in Guernsey and Alderney as well as youth groups such as Scouts, Beavers and Rainbows, holiday clubs like the Youth Commission Playscheme and the local home education network, Living Education Guernsey.
We work with students of all ages and our job is extremely varied – we might be adapting a nature craft activity for pre-schoolers one day and working with A-level students the next and – thanks to the predictably unpredictable Guernsey weather – working in glorious sunshine in the morning before donning waterproofs for the afternoon.
Education is our primary responsibility and, in addition to our work throughout the key stages, over the past two years we have visited every reception class in States schools to deliver four outdoor education sessions; these lessons are on the topics of soil and plants, insects and mini-beasts, birds and other animals and, finally, sea and shore – part of the States of Guernsey’s cultural enrichment programme and a great way to ensure a common baseline of environmental education for every child.
We have designed lessons, presentations and activities to build upon this shared foundation of knowledge, and it has been wonderful over the year and a half to work with Year 1 and 2 children who were the first cohorts to receive CEP, and to see how much information and interest they have retained.
We are now in the middle of our third year of delivering the programme and look forward to building upon this excellent start to pupils’ environmental education.
Part of the idea behind the sessions is to get children outside in all weathers (within reason) and one of our first actions was to purchase a dozen adorable frog wet weather suits so that the lessons can go ahead even if the weather is poor and the school doesn’t have wet weather gear of its own.
‘We believe that instilling a love and understanding of nature and our environment in children at such an early age will sow the seeds of an enduring interest and a sense of stewardship of our island and its unique natural heritage.’
These have proved extremely popular and have really helped to make the sessions a success on rainy days – it’s difficult to feel disgruntled at being outdoors while dressed as a frog. They’ve proved so popular that some schools have purchased their own.
The criteria for the craft activities within the CEP sessions are that they must be simple, safe, help to develop fine motor skills, promote an interest in wildlife and incorporate natural and recycled materials. Our final session, which has a theme of sea and shore, does not include a craft item to take home, so this year we have designed a certificate to be awarded to every pupil.
Our hope is that, through taking something home each week, the pupils will talk to their grown-ups about their lesson with us and what they learnt.
We believe that instilling a love and understanding of nature and our environment in children at such an early age will sow the seeds of an enduring interest and a sense of stewardship of our island and its unique natural heritage.
We are grateful to the States for its recognition of the importance of environmental education and look forward to building upon the foundation put in place by the Cultural Enrichment Programme.
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