Simple Outdoor activities can make the children involve in Nature

An outdoor session on weathering of Rocks.                                                                   - B S Guruprasad

The batch of students that arrived from TVS School, Hosur really looked like a bus load. The school had always sent about 34 children of a single class and we had meticulously mastered in handling them. The facility at camp site was more than ideal for that.  This time it was 45 children and four teachers making it slightly tight.  These grade six students were on their maiden outing and most of them had never stayed in the wilderness area overnight without their parents. The culture of outdoor discipline and conduct was yet to be sown in them. The persistent non attention to the class and to the instructions of teachers suggested that they were still afresh to classroom etiquette. Everybody seemed very enthusiastic but above reasoning.   

Some instructions to begin with.                                         - B S. Guruprasad 

Even as we tried to put things in order and gain confidence and affection of children through luring them to rewards the basic infrastructure at the camp site was letting us down.  The Hosa Jevana Dari campus was in a transition and was getting upgraded with its dormitory and facility for stay.  Some of the old structures were being thoroughly re-done and in the process there was an acute shortage of washrooms. We were losing time in recesses than in any activity.

Obviously our first option for a strategy to handle these children was to have sufficient physical activities instead of any classroom teaching.  So we had some wonderful treks and climbs as a main course for the camp. The weather cooperated and there was an alteration of sunshine, cloud and pleasant drizzling. After lunch we set off for a short walk involving some rambling up the rock strewn hillocks of the Melkote Wildlife sanctuary. The area provided a live backdrop for some narration about the types of weathering. There was every stage of the weathering process of a monolithic rock and the formation of soil.  

Children in the ravines of Melkote                                                                  - Manu K

The following morning we had a start at 6.30 am and divided the class into four smaller batches. They all moved out into open fields outside the campus with different resource persons.  They were made to choose an object and sit recording their observations of the same.

                     Learning Options in Nature: Sky is the limit                                   - Manu K                        

A child engrossed in  sketching a cassia flower               - Manu K

Their focuses seem to be much better in this activity and they sat for much longer than in the class. Some drew fantastic sketches of their specimen. Some were bad at it. However, our intention was to make them indulge in Nature.

No matter doing what. Some watched birds and some plants and some studied the landscape. They were later made to present their observations and resource persons made their comments upon it and enhanced their understanding. Children thoroughly enjoyed the activity and nobody remembered the washroom! 

Research shows that empathy and love of nature grows out of children’s regular contact with the natural world. Frequent, positive early childhood experiences with nature has shown to have a outing, the breakfast the children had another stretch to walk and climb.  

But before we embarked on that outing children were made to sit and the relevance of the Hiroshima Day was discussed.

Some 70 years ago on the same day same time, people of Hiroshima town in Japan were starting their day under the bright sunshine. An American aircraft flies over the sky and an alarm siren is blown and all the civilians run helter-shelter for cover under the bomb protective bunkers for shelter. Nothing happens for half an hour and just as the public come out of their cover there are three more aircraft seen high over the sky.

They drop the first atomic bomb used against any nation in the world. The whole city is devastated within seconds. People get burnt and annihilated to black soot killing more than 50 thousand people instantly. A white cloud rises from the epicenter towards the sky forming a mushroom shaped cloud which later spread out as a black cloud and precipitate over the devastated town with droplets of thick car. Without any drinking water, the survivors consume the toxic fluid and get exposed to radiation. A further thirty thousand victims will have a slower death. The narration was well received and children started a debate about the choice of people under various types of governments. 

Later on there was a long trek across the ravines of around the gavikallu gudda, the highest peak in the sanctuary. The scant rains that only appear occasionally in these valleys was enough to turn the landscape lush green. The cloudy weather kept the team going without breaks.  Strictly speaking ‘break’ meant some interesting specimen to be understood. We stood at anthills and a lovely old specimen of Cycas plant.

 We did some climbing upon a base rock and the children felt proud of themselves after having gone through it. By evening they were exhausted and for the Audiovisual we had the screening of a documentary on Hiroshima.