Sunday 12 February 2012

Big Badger's Day Out

Yesterday was Big Badger's Day Out, the yearly conference for Wildlife WATCH Leaders in the Lancashire Wildlife Trust. It's a great opportunity to meet other leaders, share ideas and learn new activities.

As my first conference everything was new and exciting. After the introduction and WATCH news from the previous year we split into groups for the morning's workshops. My first one was Wild Play, an hour of trying out activities that use natural materials and your imagination to make nature come to life. We had a magical photo treasure hunt finding dragons, trolls and unicorns in the woodland around us, made a giant hedgehog out of leaves and sticks on the forest floor and learnt some new games that don't need any equipment at all. It was a cold morning but with lots of laughter and fun.

After a delicious lunch we moved on to our afternoon workshops. A really useful hour learning about updating and improving your group's WATCH website. It was great for me as I hadn't been on the WATCH website much before. It's got so many great resources for activities and it will be great for keeping everyone up to date on group events.

There were two other workshops that I didn't get to go to, one on marine activities and one on how teenagers can be included in WATCH meetings. I'm sure they were great too.

The end of the day was spent sharing resources, new ideas and stories between leaders. It was lovely to meet so many enthusiastic volunteers with great ideas for activities and really motivating. I can't wait for our group to get going in the next few months!

Thanks to everyone who helped organise the day, it was a great way to spend a Saturday!

2 comments: