Tracks and trees – Wilderness Day at Evangelische Grundschule Potsdam
EWM 2nd years and their teacher had the opportunity to take children out on a tracker and storytelling experience.
Under the term motto „projects“ Annika, Bruno, Annemarie, Konstanze, Hossein and André had planned two learning arrangements for mixed age learning groups year 1-3 of about 25 children.
For the Parkrallye the old tree giants were inspiring a songline from the bench guardian (oak tree) to the oak sisters (red oak and pedunculate oak) via adventure forest over to waywarden (elm) towards winking eye tree (oak) with lots of branch grinds and a woodpecker´s hole to finally arrive at goblin´s delight (old pine tree artfully surrounded by ivy). Annika and Konstanze composed an opening story about an unhappy goblin who was rather dissatisfied with the nature disconnected lifestyle of a lot of humans. They also created a letter from the goblin council asking the children to cheer the goblin up by entering his world of tree giants along a songline and games to be played near each of the trees.
To inspire the children for tracking the EWM tracker box was used for the first time. On two footprint hotspots the children met sole walkers, toe walkers and tip-of-toe walkers. They also followed track patterns asking questions and putting themselves into the shoes of those animals by moving as they had done.
All in all we felt it was a success even if the rather ambitious planning needed to be adapted flexibly. AP
