Were you in Lewes’s Waterstone on Friday the 30th of January? If you were there, I hope you enjoyed it and had a wonderful evening. The bookshop was crowded with people coming to support our nature-based work, and yes, it was an emotional moment! Kids, parents, grandparents, politicians, environmentalists and teachers all came to enjoy the official launch of ‘Learning With Nature‘ a book that we hope will have a positive impact on current and future generations.
The authors and people from the audience, shy or not shy, all took turns to speak about how positive accessing the woodland and nature as whole is, in particular for the future of our global and local society.
People often say that truth comes out of children’s mouths. Kids were so inspiring, reciting poems about forest schools and describing their experience in the woods. Just by listening to them you could tell they were having the time of their life when they were looking for bugs, climbing trees, making fire, being outdoors and innocent.
What about Fran who attends one of our Family Funded Days, she gave us the most moving speech of the evening, telling us how her disabled daughter found happiness in the woods, how the woodland protected them and allowed them to be “together as a family, to achieve as a family and to leave the disability in the car park” . It was about “living in the here and the now” where “boundaries and expectations did not exist, it was about what she could achieve” . Amy could share happy moments with her family and the family could take a break to enjoy life with their daughter. To see what it looks like click here.
Finally, how can we thank Ringmer Academy’s Stephen Green who supported the importance of our work by saying that “young people need to know their place in the environment, where they fit and how they rely on it”.
We thank everyone who attended the book launch and make it such a friendly night and we hope that you enjoyed it. We hope that one day children are supported to feel and value their crucial place in our the future and we hope that their parents, grandparents, carers and adults everywhere, will lead them in the “right” way, the regenerative and restorative way. If you want to learn more activities in the woods please join us on one of our next courses.
Buy the Learning with Nature book online from our other website:
The Outdoor Teacher