On Friday I facilitated my first two sessions at College Lake, in partnership with staff from [1] Ashmead Combined School, and groups of Reception age children.

In the morning a group of younger children came to visit the reserve, still only attending school for half a day, and in the afternoon slightly older full-time pupils of the school.

We were given a yurt to use on-site as our base by [2] BBOWT, and from there went out to explore the woods, paths and hides of the reserve.

We asked the children where they wanted to go within the raised area of woods, fields and paths surrounding the yurt, and we (myself, Alistair from [3] Outdoor Culture, and teachers from the school) explored alongside them. Later we all walked down to a hide at the water’s edge to take a closer look.

Conversations developed out of the children’s interaction with the animals and features that they came across; from old farm machinery to the investigation of mini-beasts living under logs, from tracks in the mud and what may have made them, to the sounds of the different birds as they flew overhead or called from their hiding places in trees and on islands.

I offered the groups the same choice of ‘tools’ to use to explore the site and to record their discoveries (magnifying glasses, binoculars, bags, boxes, paper and pens), but the difference between the groups was marked. The younger morning group were absorbed by just being there; walking, talking, touching and  jumping in puddles, whilst the older group (by months) were much more keen to document their visit, for instance using mark-making to make check-lists, draw tracks and make maps, or picking up stones and leaves that caught their eye.

The children were interested in the mystery of what had created and left behind holes, and what or who had left behind tracks. They worked as detectives as well as explorers, drawing conclusions from evidence found in the landscape and making suggestions from piecing that evidence together, to create their own story of the reserve and the animals, plants and people that live or visit there.

Jemma, one of the teachers pointed out the links between my own artwork that I’m making for one of the hides, which involves using small old  suitcases as holders of objects and imagery relating to the Lake’s history and wildlife, and the children’s own investigations as they collected, gathered and enclosed their finds in bags and enveleopes.

You never quite know where things are going to head when you are working on a project which has a child-led element, and that can be both exciting and sometimes a little bit nerve-wracking. As we share feedback between us on the behaviour of individual children, and on which parts worked best, I’m sure we’ll tweak the format a little. I’ve certainly been reminded of the way that seemingly small differences in age can influence the children’s choices and their level of confidence in making those choices.

All in all it was a really rich and successful start to the participatory strand of my work at [4] College Lake - I’ll add further updates on the project with Ashmead School, and on the development of my own artwork here soon…