Day 39 - A spontaneous wild moment at school

The children I work with are from an area of high social deprivation... many of them have difficult home lives and very limited experiences outside of school. They don't really 'do' day trips, adventures, holidays etc. and well, to hear most of them talk, a trip to the supermarket is the best thing they've ever experienced!

Early this year, when I was new to the school, I spent some time with Year 1 and was amazed when we were looking at different foods and where they come from and most of the children hadn't heard of so many foods or didn't have a clue where they came from. Pumpkins, for example - you'd think a class of 5 and 6 year olds would have encountered pumpkins through Cinderella or through Hallow e'en at least - but they hadn't! 

So, back to today... I was amazed when my 'little bit of wild' was brought to me by a 4 year old!  I had to spend most of the day with the nursery class (not my favourite!) and in the last hour of the school day I was supervising some outdoor play when a little boy grabbed hold of my hand, gave me a tug and urged me  to go and see what he'd found.

He took me over to the fence, pointed to a plant poking through it and told me he'd found a blackberry plant!  My jaw dropped! It was just a thorny stem with a few leaves but this 4 year old was right - not only did he know what a blackberry was, he had recognised the plant!

I asked him how he knew it was a blackberry plant and he said he'd seen one before. I asked if he'd tasted blackberries and he said he loved them! By now, a few other children had joined us and some of those knew what blackberries were too (that in itself was surprising!).

With the little group that had gathered around, I had the children look at the stem and we talked about how 'sharp and prickly' the thorns were and they all had a feel and pricked their fingers! I found part of the plant with flowers on, pulling the stem down to show the children what the flowers look like and we looked for blackberries but couldn't see any, then I explained that there aren't any blackberries on the plant yet, but after the flowers have blossomed and then died, tiny blackberries start to grow. I was able to show them the beginnings of some blackberries - tiny and green - and said that if they came out to look again after the summer holidays, when they were in the reception class, they might be able to see some blackberries nearly ready to eat!

I really struggle with day to day life at school as it's a totally different world compared to how I was brought up and where I came from, and everything about it is so very different to anywhere I've worked before. I find it really hard working somewhere with no outdoor 'conservation' areas, very little outdoor time at all and children (and staff) who have very little interest in, appreciation of or knowledge of the natural world. To be quite honest, I find it really depressing!

I miss working with rural children who play outdoors and appreciate nature, who like to watch things like Deadly 60 and enjoy exploring the natural world. I miss doing outdoors-y, nature type activities and squeezing in the odd bit of forest school. I dream of returning to that sort of school, so those few 'wild' minutes this afternoon really made my day and it was lovely to fit in a very rare opportunity to share a bit of nature with the children!  That's something that used to happen pretty much daily for me before but in the eight months I've worked at this school, I've had just 3 tiny moments where I could share something nature related with children - aside from today, there was one occasion last week when I worked with the reception class and they found a bee and then a hoverfly that they thought were going to sting everyone, and one occasion when there was a beetle in the year 4 classroom that the children were all scared of! How pitiful is that!

On my way home, I purposely looked for brambles as I drove along the lanes and stopped to take a few photos of them in honour or today's unexpected, child led, wild moment!

The postman also delivered a little bit of nature to me today too, which was waiting for me when I got home - something else to add to the reading pile!

On a brief wander in the garden this evening I enjoyed the feeling of warm flagstones beneath my feet, checked on my 'insect watering hole' (the rain has been keeping it topped up this week for me) and spotted a Blue-tailed damselfly (Ischnura elegans) sitting on the hedge too.