NatureLIVE

Tonight and Last night I supported my workmate and good friend EM to facilitate a professional development course for Educators, Families and the community. NatureLIVE is a course designed by the organisation I work for to get people back into the natural surroundings and encourage them to get children back in to nature. It's a course I love and has definetly inspired me.

The course was presented to us staff on the coldest, wettest day you could imagine. It was bucketing down with rain. While there is a saying at work - "There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing" - this day really was inappropriate and unfortunetly we didn't get to do much of the course itself.

EM has presented it once before, so had a good handle on how she wanted it to go and I really was there just to help set up and back her up if she needed it (which she didn't cause she's amazing!). The first evening is held indoors, where we set up the room with lots of natural resources and items. At all our courses we make a bit of "thing" about having candles and chocolates, lots of feel good stuff. Last night it was raining and looking pretty miserable, so we were worried that it would be raining again tonight, thankfully it wasn't and ended up being the perfect night for it - cool, but not windy or wet.

Tonight we went to the Botanical Gardens. I was waiting at a spot with goodie bags and blankets. We had put out lots of glow sticks and had umbrellas for everyone should it decide to rain - always good to be prepared! EM met the group at the main gate and gave everyone a torch, then told them they had to find me somewhere in the gardens. I could see the torchs coming and it was so cool to have people racing towards me, all excited that they found me.

We really had a good talk about nature, did some listening excercises and used our senses to explore some natural objects that I'd found while waiting for them to find me earlier.

We did think it was funny that a couple of people walked past and probably thought we were crazy woman out in the cold with glow sticks and sitting in the dark feeling, smelling and listening to leafs and pieces of bark, but who cares really?!

During the wrap up a large stick insect dropped down from the tree and landed right in front of MS, who screamed like a girl and ran away it must be said. :) It was almost as if we'd planned it! Everyone crowded around it, fascinated. After talking about nature and the wonderment in the world around us, we were all fascinated with this insect.

Finally we sent everyone on their merry way, goodie bags, torches and umbrellas in hand, and hopefully a new persepective on nature and allowing children to explore it. EM and I tootled off too.

All up the course is 2 & 1/2 hours over 2 nights. It's a quirky wee course that doesn't actually give you anything you don't already know, just a new way of looking at the world around us and that's the cool bit. We've talked about doing the course during the day, but tonight I could see how there is something magical about doing it at night. How many people do you know that have walked through the creek and into the bush at the Botanical Gardens at night with torches?! Not many I bet! How much fun does it sound?! Heaps!