This summer, we were very excited to launch our Cody Wildlings programme for ages 8-13. We led a series of art & nature activities across five weeks of the summer holidays where we took time to get to know the nature living on our doorstep and get creative!

We kicked off with a fab nature journaling session…

Nature Journaling is a lovely way to build a relationship with the nature around us. It can be done anywhere and helps us notice and think about things we might see and experience every day but may not have the time to truly appreciate. So our Cody Wildlings had a go at doing just that.

To start, we each made our own nature journals to take out with us when exploring Cody Dock. We had fun making our journals personal to us and we used collage material to bring some nature into our designs.

We then headed out to our sensory garden where we simply took time to stop and be aware of the nature around us.

We observed the different colours and shapes we could see, the textures we could feel, the smells of different plants, the sounds we could hear…

Each of us was attracted to different things and we added our observations to our journals by sketching and taking notes. We had a great time really appreciating the nature that makes itself at home around Cody Dock. We discovered some beautiful daisies, lots of lavender and herbs, some fluffy lambs ear, and a beautiful Banded Demoiselle Damselfly. However, the star of the show was our resident cat, Freddie who did some great posing for us!

Our journals were full of thoughtful notes and colourful illustrations by the end of the session. We hope our Cody Wildlings will find the time to keep adding to their Nature Journals: noticing and appreciating the nature around them!