No Mow May

It's #NoMowMay!! 🐝🐛🐜🐞🌱

The month of May is when all the grasses and wildflowers such as dandelions and buttercups start to sprout up and grow in abundance in people's back gardens, public parks and countryside.  These provide a rich and sheltered habitat for bees and butterflies to live in, and these tiny creatures perform valuable tasks such as pollination which help to spread diversity and colour throughout our landscape.

Mowing these down will only reduce the biodiversity of the area and make it harder for animals and insects to exist in that environment.  No Mow May is a campaign to get people to think about their local ecosystems and to think twice before mowing their grassy areas just to make them look neat or tidy.

If you can leave an area to just go wild then that's the best option!  If you want to bring some sense of tidiness to your garden, try just mowing down the middle and leaving the edges to grow. Alternatively, get creative and mow different shapes such as a figure of eight into your lawn to break up the areas that are mowed/not mowed.  If you want to go even further, the National Trust has shared a video on how to make a 'scaremow' to encourage people not to mow their lawns.  

Not mowing your lawn is really crucial to protecting some of the UK's most valuable plant and insect species.  The Conservation Charity 'Plantlife' is asking people to do a survey of the plants and flowers in their lawn at the end of May to see the diversity of plants and flowers that have been able to grow.  You can also take part in their Great British Wildflower Hunt where they are asking people to go searching for different species and hopefully learn some new ones along the way. 

Why not take a look at their website www.plantlife.org.uk and see what you can learn or do in your local area 🌼

The power of worms

If you're looking for something new to add to your forest school or outdoor learning area, then consider building a wormery!  They may not sound like the most appealing of structures to have, but they can be absolutely brilliant for teaching about the importance of soil and the processes that happen within it.  If you happen to be on a school site, you can add some of your school's food waste to it as well which helps reduce the amount of food that goes to landfill.  Having a wormery provides a great teaching point and can really help educate children on what happens within soil and how decomposers are some of the most important organisms in the ecosystem.  

You can make a simple wormery that will last for about a week (visit the Wildlife Trusts website to find out more).  All you'll need is a large (1 litre) plastic bottle with the top cut off.  Build up several layers of garden soil, compost and sand, and top with some fallen leaves or old flowers.  Then, hunt down some worms and add them onto the top layer of the wormery.  The'll soon bury down and start decomposing all the decaying matter.  Secure the top with some cling film and an elastic band - don't forget to puncture some holes in the cling film! Wrap the bottle in some card to make it dark for the worms and place it in a cool part of your outdoor space.  Check the layers every so often to see how the worms are doing, and add a little water as necessary to stop it drying out.  Finally, when you have finished with your wormery, release the worms back into the wild so they can continue doing their important work under our feet!

To make it a more permanent structure, buy a wormery which comes with multiple trays and layers for the worms to work their way through. This acts similar to a compost bin but has the added excitement of seeing the worms doing their thing.  How much of the school's food waste can you fit in the wormery?!

Friluftsliv

If anyone's good at embracing the outdoors, it's the Scandinavians. "Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær!" - "There's no bad weather, only bad clothes!" There's a lot to be said for this approach, and (aside from cases of extreme weather!) encouraging children to play outside every day and develop resilience is an important life skill.

Friluftsliv is another Nordic word/concept/expression which we can learn a lot from.  Literally translated, it means 'open-air living'.  This means getting outside everyday no matter the season, weather or what mood you're in.  This is generally a part of Nordic culture where there is an emphasis on spending time in nature and being close to greenery, forests and water.  Historically, this may have meant spending extended periods of time in the great outdoors, but nowadays it can mean spending a part of every working day or school day outside, either as part of or in addition to the normal outdoor recreation time.  

In Norway, Friluftsliv is included into the school curriculum.  This means that all children will be taught in an outdoor setting and will learn the skills needed to have adventures and stay safe when outside; this includes skills such as swimming, orienteering, building a shelter, foraging safely for food, using tools, and practising simple first aid techniques.  Some of the teachings come from the Sami people (who are indigenous to Scandinavia) and their traditions, which helps children to understand their culture and develop in a more rounded way.  This approach has been shown to improve social, emotional, physical and cognitive development in children and teenagers. 

The English curriculum includes some outdoors education but this is generally in the context of sport rather than learning about the outdoors. Forest Schools are becoming increasingly prevalent but this is mainly in the primary school setting.  Why not think about adopting some of the ethos of friluftsliv and include it in your curriculum?  What benefits could it bring to both the children and staff at your school?