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Everyday is a school day

Schoolchildren at Smite by Wendy Carter

Read about trainee Meg's day with the education team...

Hello readers, time is flying! Since I last wrote a blog, and in no particular order, I’ve been busy with a whole range of activities: 

  • Brush cutting on reserves here, there and everywhere
  • Mowing using the two-wheel tractors and getting pretty familiar with the many, many bolts that need tightening before every use
  • Hay raking, bracken bashing and ragwort pulling with the rovers
  • Dormouse box and footprint tunnel checking in the Wyre Forest
  • Bat surveying with Worcestershire Wildlife Consultancy
  • Searching for noble chafer frass through orchard surveys with Dead Wood Society volunteers (part of the Severn Treescapes project)
  • Film and photo training with filmmaker Hendrik Harms
  • Putting our trailer towing and off-road driving tickets to good use, tearing up the roads of Worcestershire with a correctly loaded trailer attached at safe and controlled speeds (of course). 

I am very pleased to report that being asked to ratchet strap items to the trailer no longer sends me into a cold frenzy and I have come to feel rather nifty at ratchet strapping – progress indeed! Most recently, we’ve completed our crosscutter maintenance chainsaw training and with the assessment next week, it’s the talk of the trainee town.

Children looking at snail by Emily Brazier

Children looking at snail by Emily Brazier

But today I want to write about the day I spent with Hayley Probert, Wilder Schools Officer, and 36 wide eyed and inquisitive primary school aged children.

When the education team asked for volunteers to help with the last Lower Smite Farm school trip of the year in July, I was quick to raise my hand. I was curious – what occurred on these school trips? I believed wholeheartedly in the education team’s mission, having heard snippets of information about their work in full staff meetings and at the last Whole Trust Day. But what did their work look like on the ground? I was about to find out.

After a quick run through of the plan with Hayley, we began the day by setting up the space and preparing resources for several different activities. When the children arrived, Hayley gave the most riveting and enticing welcome to Lower Smite Farm I’d ever heard – after asking the children which animals they’d expect to find here she’d describe the animals and their habitats and ecology with such interest that I was on the edge of my seat, itching to start exploring, just like children were! I was beginning to experience Lower Smite Farm through their eyes.

To start, Hayley introduced the biology and ecology of arthropods - the focus of the day - as well as five common tree species. The children quickly put their newfound knowledge into the first activity, designing leaf creatures, where they chose one of the five tree leaves to form the thorax, stuck the leaf to a piece of card, and taking inspiration from the learning guides around the room, used natural materials plus coloured pens to add abdomen, legs, wings, antennae, pincers and any other body parts they wanted. Hearing children from year three, four and five proudly explain their leaf creature to me using facts and terminology that they had learnt from Hayley a few minutes earlier was impressive and rewarding.

Next, we set off on an adventure into the orchard to sweep net the long grass along the edges of the path. The group of year five boys that I was with at this point were desperate to peer inside the net each time and get as close as possible to the insects they found. It surprised me how immediately captivated they were, almost fighting to get a closer look, ID sheets and booklets flying everywhere and shouting out with glee and growing confidence as they identified each insect.

Our adventure then continued to the edge of the woodland, where the children gently shook the lowest branches of the trees so that arthropods fell out of the tree to land on large bed sheets laid out on the ground below. During this we came across an insect that nobody could identify, although the children gave it a good go, and unfortunately, we didn’t have time to sit down and consult the apps. I still to this day wonder what it was!

children insect

Paul Harris/2020VISION

We then walked a little further until we reached the education woodland basecamp, a clearing in the trees filled with many microhabitats such as log piles, a bee house, some willow domes and a circle of logs to sit on in the centre. Here, the children’s mission was to find the trees of the five leaves used earlier for leaf creatures, and to feel and discuss the differences between their bark, branches, leaves and shape. Then the habitat hunt began. The highlight of the day for me came when one girl found a Devil’s coach horse beetle and managed to coax it into a magnifying jar. As we showed it around the circle, exclamations of intrigue and excitement, as well as fear and disgust could be heard. But as Hayley revealed more about the Devil’s coach horse beetle and the other arthropods being shown around the circle, children who’d initial reaction was ‘eek’ and ‘eeew’, became more and more intrigued and then amazed by the minibeasts and gasps of ‘ooo’ and ‘woaw’ gradually replaced the uncertainty at the beginning.

In the afternoon, tasks included watering vegetables and plants in the garden, being butterfly detectives, a pond invertebrates food chain team race, and forming ‘seed bombs’ of native wildlflower seeds, that each child took away with them to drop near their homes, and sorting creatures in feely bags into three habitats we’d learnt about that day (woodlands, ponds and orchards/meadows).

On reflection, I was already a big advocate of education and engagement work being integral to the shared goal of saving and restoring nature, but my day with Hayley and these children opened my eyes to just how powerful the education team’s work can be. I now know that however I contribute to conservation in the future, wherever I end up in my career, it really does all start with education. I saw firsthand that if you teach children a small amount about nature and give them personal experiences, you soon nurture an appreciation and respect of nature that seems to me to be strong enough to last, so that we have people that are willing to fight and take daily action for nature in years to come.

My advice to future trainees (not that anyone asked!): spend a day with the education team! Even if you don’t love working with children, it is so worth it. You’ll get an insight into an important component of how we get people to care and how we get adults of the future to support the practical conservation work that we’re learning how to do in our traineeship. The education team at Worcestershire Wildlife Trust deliver an engaging, accessible and fun programme with the Lower Smite Farm school trips that does just that.

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