As part of our national response to the effects of climate change, we know we must adapt the way our food is produced.

Greenway Primary, in Rumney, Cardiff, are already on the case, gifting their learners with a wheelbarrow full of gardening knowledge with their edible gardening work. Our Lead Specialist Advisor: Education & Lifelong Learning, Karen Clarke spoke to Simon Evans from the school to learn more.

June sees the return of the Wildlife Trust’s 30 Days Wild Campaign. Whether you sign up as an education group, or as a family, will you step up to the challenge and do one wild thing every day throughout the month of June? Sign up to receive a free pack of goodies to help you complete 30 Random Acts of Wildness during the month, plus lots of ideas to help you stay wild through June and beyond!

Tune into the natural environment’s potential to promote health and learning with our online CPD webinars this spring.  

*NEW* Sand dunes Tuesday 27.06.23 (English) and Wednesday 28.06.23 (Welsh) at 4.15 pm – 5.45 pm. Aimed at educators of all levels, this webinar will give you cross-curricular practical ideas and activities to get your learners enthused about sand dunes!

*NEW* Life on the river – focusing on the Rivers Teifi, Tywi, Cleddau and Usk

Wednesday 21.06.23 (English) and Thursday 22.06.23 (Welsh). From the water cycle and a rivers journey to the secret life of brown trout, this webinar will focus on the Rivers Teifi, Tywi, Cleddau and Usk but all the activities shared could be used to learn more about any river in Wales or beyond. 

To book your place on any of the above webinars or for further information please visit our Tocyn Cymru webpage.

!! £165 bursary available towards supply costs per attendee !!

Coming up

From crime scene to courtroom – Who’s committed the enviro crime, and can you ensure they do time?

Cardiff, Thursday 15^th June 2023. With an environmental crime having been committed, educators take on the role of trainee NRW Environment Officers and take part in a day of cross-curricular outdoor learning, hands on activities and challenges. Book here.

'Bonjour Glamorgan Heritage Coast' – using the Curriculum for Wales as a tool to showcase the South Wales coastline

Dunraven Bay, Vale of Glamorgan,  Wednesday 21^st June 2023.  Participants will spend the day taking part in a range of hands-on, cross-curricular activities in the natural environment, learning about the coastline through the lens of the 6 Areas of Learning and Experience.  Book here.

We are very excited to announce our pilot Student Work Experience Placements will take place between July and September this year! There are up to 16 work experience placements on offer, of between 3 days and a week spread out around Wales.

Do you know a young person of 15 years or older? These roles are available for students aged 15 and above and are designed to give them an opportunity to participate in work experience within Wales’ environment sector. Roles range from a Hydrometry and Telemetry Assistant in Bala to helping out as a Visitor Centre assistant at one of our three Visitor Centres, all of which will be hosting placements throughout the summer holidays.

All roles will be advertised here.  Please share with any one you think may be interested.  Sign up to our weekly recruitment newsletter for up to date jobs and placement opportunities.

Wales is well known as a legendary place of fairy tale castles, gothic gargoyles, marvellous monuments and industrial ironworks! Our historic places have, and continue to play a vital role in shaping Wales. They provide a living link to our diverse histories and help us make sense of our place in an ever changing world. Because of this, the Curriculum for Wales asks that our learners be grounded in an understanding of the identities, landscapes and histories that come together to form their cynefin. And an organisation that can help you do this is Cadw. Cadw is the Welsh Government’s historic environment service, caring for, and protecting our historic places, inspiring us to engage with Wales’ heritage. There is a treasure chest of CADW sites that you can visit, connecting your learners to our national history. And a plethora of teaching resources covering festivals, traditions, lifestyles, heroes and heroines and much more.

Fancy a field trip? The Geographical Association is inviting schools to explore their local natural spaces and wider places between the 26th June and the 7th July, for #nationalfieldworkfortnight. Head your group out into your grounds, parks, farmyards, churchyards, and even the carpark! Encourage your learners to investigate, observe, discover, challenge, test out ideas and gain a deeper and wider understanding of the world around them. Visit the Geography Association website for lots of activity ideas and ways to organise your group’s fieldwork experiences.

Sowing the seeds for a healthy body and mind, getting stuck into a spot of gardening is good for us, no matter our age. Getting physical, whether that’s burning calories and building muscle by digging for Britain, enhancing fine motor skills by picking out seedlings, or topping up vitamin D for strong bones while strolling between the flower beds or mowing the lawn, gardening helps us keep fit and encourages us to be more active. Using gardening tools from pruning saws to wheelbarrows, can give us a full body workout. Keep an eye on our Teaching safe campfire and tool use skills webpage for our coming soon tool use resource cards that will aid you in teaching your learners how to use these safely. Gardening helps us to relax and feel calm, improving our mood. Trying your hand at nurturing plants can be quite’ trowel’ and error, but it will grow on you! And the benefits abound. Want to know more? Check out Thrive – using gardening to change lives.

Adapting to the changes that the climate and nature emergencies will bring is, as we know, going to be a challenge, as there is no instruction manual to guide us. One of these impacts is that sea levels will rise around the globe. So what will this mean for the Welsh coastline? What will it look like? What will happen to the communities and wildlife that reside there? Exploring The (Future) Wales Coast Path is a short film detailing a project based along the Gwent Levels in South Wales, that questions this and reflects on similar impacts across the other side of the World. In North Wales, Fairbourne in Gwynedd, is in a picture perfect spot but coastal erosion could make its residents the UK’s first climate refugees. The village is at high risk of being submerged from rising sea levels and residents have been told they will need to move despite ambitious new flood defence plans. Could rising sea levels and coastal erosion affect the community that your learners live in? Get them finding out more with online coastal risk screening tools such as Climate Central.

The BBC’s Countryfile programme has taken inspiration from Sir David Attenborough’s Wild Isles, and launched their Wild Britain initiative to galvanize us all to help save our precious wildlife, which is under threat. Can your learners turn your local area into a wildlife haven? Get them involved in designing and making feeding and water stations around the grounds, local places or in their gardens. Maybe they can create a wildlife home for birds, bats, hedgehogs, frogs and toads, and invertebrates. There are so many helpful ideas on how to do this online from making a mini pond to a hedgehog highway, so get your learners researching, building and maintaining their creature creations that will help to protect nature. Their acts of kindness to wildlife can then be quickly uploaded to the interactive online map. There are four kind acts that your learners can post each week – there are already a lot there!!

• Wildlife homes
• Feeding stations
• Water for Wildlife
• Volunteering for Wildlife

Encourage your learners to have their say! Sam Rowlands MS and the Senedd research team have been working on preparing a child and young person’s consultation on the Outdoor Education Bill. The consultation is now live and available through the Outdoor Education (Wales) Bill Page, open until 23rd June. There are a range of tools to help the children and young people better understand what the consultation is about and what is being asked of them in the survey including a cartoon strip.

Would you like regular outdoor learning updates and news?  Why not follow the Outdoor Learning Wales Twitter account or join the closed Facebook Group which both offer a platform to keep up to date, spread the word of ongoing projects and facilitate discussions with anyone with an interest in outdoor learning and environmental education in Wales.

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