Where all the wild kids are
Waituna West kids have gone back to the wild with a bush class that has taken them out of their comfort zone. Carly Thomas spent a morning with them.
Two adults are being led through a bush path by two under fives. It is clear who is in charge and a closer look shows you who feels at complete ease with their natural surroundings.
Four-year-old Elsie Giesen and three-yearold Bessie Stone have been coming to this generous pocket of bush in Waituna West with their Playcentre for six weeks now and they are proud to show it off.
‘‘Don’t go that way,’’ says Elsie, hands on hips, ‘‘you’ll hurt yourself’’.
Bessie says to be careful of the babies as she manoeuvres her little feet around equally delicate but sturdy new growth on the bush floor and as the foursome round a bend one of the adults speaks up, as if suddenly realising that she is indeed an adult.
‘‘Do you two know where you are going?’’ Both look bewildered at the question. ‘‘Yeah,’’ says Elsie. The question gets a reshuffle: ‘‘And where are we going?’’
‘‘Down here,’’ says Elsie, a bit huffy now. The point is not the destination for Elsie, it’s the joy of getting there. She’s going nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
Bessie’s mum, Lucy Stone, is the one who initiated the idea with the rural Playcentre. She did an intensive course in forest schooling when she went for a trip back home to the UK in August. What she is doing in the bush with her local Playcentre is putting her new knowledge into practice and completing her qualification. She is also following her passion.
Forest schooling is big in Europe with student-led, inquiry-based schools being numerous, but here in New Zealand, Stone says it is surprisingly taking a little longer.
‘‘Maybe it’s because New Zealanders have that supposed outdoors label already. But sadly, I think people are moving further away from how things used to be. A lot of adults that I speak to who were brought up here talk about their childhoods spent outside, but it’s not the same now. We have created learning around what we expect the kids to do.’’
Stone wants to change that. This former primary school teacher totally and utterly believes in the benefits of getting kids outside.
‘‘I have always had a real passion for outdoor education and the possibilities it holds for learning. Nature allows space and calm. It really opens up a child’s senses and we can be so guilty of taking so much of a child’s innate yearning for knowledge away from them by creating environments that are ready made.’’
In the bush they build fires, Bessie showing she knows how to add wood safely. The kids cook on the fire, tell stories around it and they go home with the smell of wood smoke in their hair.
Water is being pumped up from the creek below and the kids take turns pouring it through a funnel. Mud play is a favourite and Ernie Stone proudly shows off his earth-caked hands.
Sticks become toys, leaves are works of art and, all around them, the kids are exploring, their horizons being made as wide as the treeframed sky above them.
Sam Richardson is using a battery-powered drill to make holes in a tree stump; he is excited because the sawdust coming out of one of the holes is a different colour than what came out of the hole before.
Stone takes a moment to explain to Sam that Les, one of the owners of the bush, cut this tree down for a purpose and so that’s why the stump is there.
‘‘He put thought into why this tree was cut down, he didn’t just cut it down for no reason.’’
Dee and Les Cartwright own the bush. They moved to Waituna West a few years ago, drawn to the pocket of trees that spread expansively down a gully to a serpentine creek and up the hill steeply on the other side. They travel often but love coming home the most to their London house bus parked in a private little grove.
Les says he loves knowing the kids are using the bush.
‘‘It’s wonderful, it’s why we came here, things like this. We never wanted to be hermits in the bush and now we have all these lovely little voices in there.’’
Stone says she is overwhelmed by the enthusiasm the Cartwrights have shown towards what she is doing with the kids.
‘‘I was blown away with the bush and when I first spoke to Les about it, with each different thing I said, like lighting fires and using tools and making huts, I was just waiting for him to go, ‘‘actually no’’, but he was totally into it. Having landowners like them on board is huge.’’
The sessions are complete for the year now and the parents are singing Stone’s praises.
Mel Richardson is contemplative for a moment as she tries to explain the experience of bringing her kids to the bush for the last six weeks.
‘‘It’s just awesome seeing them in a natural environment. We don’t go into the bush at home and spend three hours, and that has been amazing. There was one little girl who on the first day, she just cried for three hours and now she loves it. She sat in the creek for about an hour the other day. She was happy and she felt so comfortable.’’
Richardson says to see her kids move away from ‘‘plastic rubbish’’ to bringing home stick men they have made in the bush and playing with them instead, ‘‘has been so, so amazing’’.
And Stone doesn’t want it to stop there. She wants more kids to get out into the bush and would love to branch out to more Playcentres and schools and not just rural, but town schools too.
‘‘My long-term goal is to run a forest school in New Zealand. The bush environment totally takes them out of their comfort zone and it seems to make them so much more ready to learn. What I have seen during my time with these children has just been amazing, it really is fantastic.’’
Elsie is off running down a path now, jumping over a tree root with a stick in her hand. Bessie is eating chocolate cake mix that was destined to be cooked over the fire and Sam is still drilling those holes, looking like he would quite happily do so for the next two hours.
Beyond the bush the world is ticking away, but right here where the trees stretch for as far as the eye can see, these kids are in the moment, they are in the magic and in nature where a bit of wild is also a bit of wonderful.