Dipping my toes into the Water

Dipping my toes into ‘Anna Outdoors’

I never dreamt that my early love for rock pooling on Borth beach, West Wales would lead to a career in the field of conservation and community engagement, let alone encourage me to dip my toes into the water of self-employment, but here I am, armed with bucket-fulls of enthusiasm!

I can still regularly be found with a pond net in hand, only now along the banks of the Great River Stour, surrounded by groups of excited school children, eager to dip in their nets and discover the wildlife of this watery world. The look of fascination on their faces when they catch a small fish, damselfly or water boatman is worth capturing, and which I use to develop a unique learning resource.

I love being able to provide opportunities for young people to explore nature’s playground in fun, creative and innovative ways, meeting national curriculum objectives through games, trails and hands on activity sessions. It seems to work, verified not only by the teachers that review our sessions, but now the young people. Here are my last year four groups ‘one word’ descriptions of their  river dipping and wildlife Olympics day. ‘Flabbergasting’ is my favourite!

Happy | Awesome | Enjoyable | Mind- blowing | Great | Super | Interesting | Fish | Insects | Fun | Cool | Flabbergasting | Amusing | Fabulous | Outside | Speechless (also like this one!) | Amazing |