Emma worked with the team from Croome to take all of the designs that the children came up with to make a guide to help other children and families to notice things at Croome or wherever the call for exploration took them. From this, Croogles (Croome + Goggles) were created.
Five Pathways to Nature Connection
Emma applied The 5 Pathways to Nature Connection, developed by Dr Miles Richardson and the team at the University of Derby as a framework for exploration.
Contact – The act of engaging with nature through the senses for pleasure e.g. listening to birdsong, smelling wild flowers, watching the sunset.
Beauty – Engagement with the aesthetic qualities of nature, e.g. appreciating natural scenery or engaging with nature through the arts.
Meaning – Using nature or natural symbolism (e.g. language and metaphors) to represent an idea, thinking about the meaning of nature and signs of nature, e.g. the first swallow of summer.
Emotion – An emotional bond with, and love for nature e.g. talking about, and reflecting on your feelings about nature.
Compassion – Extending the self to include nature, leading to a moral and ethical concern for nature e.g. making ethical product choices, being concerned with animal welfare.
Emma also used the New Economic Foundation’s 5 Ways to Wellbeing, to encourage the children to explore together as a group and to share stories of their adventures.
Be Active. Play games. Go outside. Run. Skip. Get your hands dirty.
Take Notice of the everyday, the unusual and the beautiful.
Keep Learning to grow in confidence and try new things.
Connect. Make friends and join in.
Give your time and share your ideas. You can make a difference no matter who you are!
Emma and the team from Croome presented Croogles to the children, all now in Reception, at Grove Primary School in November 2018. The team really wanted the children to feel ownership of their creation and to understand how the resource could be used in other places, not just at Croome. The children spent some time remembering what they had seen and heard at Croome. They also had the opportunity to make up beats and rhymes with performance poet Kurly McGeachie.