Spotting Nature

St Peter's Primary School's First Wonderland at Break time.

Today Year 6 were invited to join me in the classroom or for an outdoor activity. 15 students followed me into the playground and we started looking around.

We were searching for:

5 things we can see

4 things we can hear

3 things you can touch

2 things you can smell

and 1 thing you can taste in the air. (Don't eat anything!)

Step, a schools work charity in St Albans, developed an iMatter journal. There are 5 themes within the journal, each theme uses a wellbeing tool to help us reflect. The tool we picked for the session today is Nature Spotting.

To introduce this activity they say:

Spending time in green space or bringing nature into your everyday life can improve your mood, reduce feelings of stress and improve your confidence and self-esteem

As the students at St Peter's explored the playground for this activity they experienced just that. A familiar playground they have likely run, skipped and jumped in for many years became a fresh place to explore. It is important to bring ourselves into an awareness of our surroundings. Anxiety can put blinkers on us and prevent us from seeing all that is ahead of us.

They saw; Children, mud, table, trees, windows, bins, bricks, wood, snacks, fences, netball hoops.

They heard; Screaming, children, birds, humans, wind, stones, crying, crunching leaves.

They touched; Tables, leaves, fruit, paper, gloves.

They could smell; Bins, snacks, air, wood, wet, toast, orange, strawberries.

They tasted in the air; Pollution, nothing, fresh

As we returned to the classroom I encouraged them to repeat this next time they find themselevs in the park, or in the playground tomorrow and see what things they notice. We sometimes miss the things right in front of us. As year 6 they are familair with eachothers persoanilties and ways. I wonder if we took the time to notice again, what new things we might discover and be grateful we have noticed.

The Trinity Project made space to notice the familiar a fresh with a group of year 6's in Rickmansworth and a few who joined in from other years. What a privilege!

Charlotte.