The Nature Table

There is a wonderful article in Incap Journal, this week, which really caught my eye!

I’m a massive advocate of the nature table and all that it brought to so many primary school classrooms.As a teacher, the nature table was an ever present feature in my classroom. Yet, sadly, the idea has declined over the years. 

How else are we going to stir an interest in our children and promote a lifelong love if we don’t use what is around us, show it off to its best and encourage young children to look,question and marvel? I think it’s a pretty poor show when you can’t grab what is essentially for free and really make the most of it!

Furthermore, when I was a young child at primary school, we were regularly taken out on nature walks. I loved those too! Nature studies were also part of the curriculum. I was very fortunate.

Being lucky enough to live close to woodland and common land, I was an outside child, always fascinated by what the natural world had to offer. We made our own amusement much of the time, embracing what nature threw at us during the different seasons. An appropriate iSpy book was always tucked in my back pocket…trees, birds, flowers etc. Even sitting in the back garden brought daily pleasures; watching grasshoppers, marvelling at butterflies, studying dandelions and closely observing what happened when they went to seed, listening to the bird life, which was an incessant noise…all of these things and so much more, added to my growing knowledge of the natural world. And, like a sponge, a young child’s brain soaks up so much. It’s never ending really.

Bring back the nature table! Most definitely!

You can read this wonderful article 

Here