Footprints project with Histon Early Years Centre and Homefield Park
Artist Deb Wilenski has begun planning a new project with staff from Histon Early Years Centre to take groups of children each week to their local woodland, Homefield Park.
We have established a number of starting points for our explorations:
Experiencing the outdoor space – through the senses, through physical exploration. Taking time to find the many different spaces within the woods/park – wide open space, covered protective space, cultivated places, tangled and wild places, special places….in all sorts of weather and conditions
Making discoveries – finding what is there, beginning to notice and meet the wildlife and plants, finding and settling into favourite places, discovering what can happen there in terms of play
Going together and building a community – encouraging children to get themselves ready (putting on boots, waterproofs etc.), consulting together on what we need to take with us, sharing explorations and discoveries, sharing documentation to build familiarity within the group as well as with the new environment
Supporting enquiry and imagination – being alongside the children, using observation/documentation practices to pick up their fascinations and ideas, offering back ways to explore these fascinations further, making space for children to follow and share their interests, and working with ways of extending these in the classroom.
With thanks to the following Cambridge Colleges for their generous support of the Footprints programme:
Corpus Christi College
Jesus College
Trinity Hall