Environmental Activities

Aim:
To extend the children’s experience of the outdoors and help them appreciate their environment, which will in turn reinforce their desire to behave responsibly in the outdoors.

Description:
The children collect natural items (e.g. moss, leaves, grasses, feathers) to make a weaving loom or journey stick, which will act as a memory of a trip they have taken.

Resources:
• Natural memento items collected from the children’s trip
• 4 suitable sticks (for loom) or 1 stick (for journey stick), to attach the items to
• Wool of various colours
• Scissors
• Container with sand (for displaying completed Weaving looms/sticks)

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2. Weaving Loom or Journey Stick

There are many environmental activities that you could carry out with your group to help them to understand and appreciate the natural environment. Sources of ideas include Joseph Cornell and Steve Van Matre. Here are just a few suggestions.

Choose from the following 3 activities or do all 3!:

Before leaving on your trip, discuss with the children any hazards they might come across and the ways they will minimise these.

Suggested Method:

On their trip, children gather natural items that they think are beautiful or interesting. It should be emphasised to the children that they should only collect things that are not alive.

Once you get back, help the children to make a loom like the one pictured above. Alternatively, use one stick to make a journey stick. Use wool to attach the natural mementoes of the children’s trip to the loom or stick. You could display them upright in a container of sand.

The children could write a short piece about their trip and tie it onto their weaving loom or journey stick so that others can read about their experiences. Alternatively, ask them to write adjectives to describe their items and attach them to their work of art.

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