Bring back the Nature Table

The British Naturalists Association’s Illustrated Nature Table

Joanna Lumley who has recently become a Vice President of the British Naturalists' Association says: "Every junior school should have a bird table outside and a nature table inside in the classroom!"

BNA Vice Presidents Chris Packham and Simon King strongly support the "Bring Back the Nature Table" campaign as a way that youngsters can naturally get hands on contact with their local natural history.

The British Naturalists’ Association are delighted to be co-operating with Jordan’s Cereals and Country Living magazine in a campaign to promote the return of the nature table. Simon King, Vice-President of the British Naturalists’ Association wholeheartedly supports this campaign as it “encourages children to get involved directly with the natural history of their immediate area”.

Generations of children on finding colourful autumn leaves or springtime catkins on weekend walks with their parents, would take in their treasured find to add to the class nature table. They gained a direct knowledge of what was living about them, and realised how the season’s changed.

BNA chairman Roger Tabor said: “The loss of the nature table from the school classroom is symptomatic of the increasing lack of direct contact with the natural world for youngsters today. We have been depriving children of the joy of finding out about their local inheritance of wildlife. This campaign to “Bring Back the Nature Table” is a positive step in the right direction”.

The British Naturalists’ Association has always encouraged Young Naturalists to learn about the wildlife around them. In the very first issue of the Association’s magazine “Country-side” in 1905 it encouraged nature study in schools : “The Country-side will offer a handsome Challenge Shield, to be kept for one year, for the best year’s natural history work done by a school”. The Blake Shield BNA Trust Fund’s Competition has for over the last two decades revived this tradition.

In that same first 1905 issue of “Country-side” it read: “Of course, one of the great educational advantages in bringing natural objects into the school is that with a little care and forethought children may be taught to observe for themselves and so learn the art of thinking. Examination of specimens then has a distinct value in recording phenomena of wild life”.

The following issue of “Country-side” a week later encouraged school classrooms to make their own local nature map. The school children would be asked what they had seen, an early summer flower or butterfly, which would be marked on with each new record. The next issue noted “The first step in nature-teaching is to gain a knowledge of local objects. The main idea of all our nature teaching is to bring the breath of the fields within the four walls of the school”

The BNA also had a Schools' Exchange established in 1905 so that kids in city schools could receive nature table materials from country schools, and vice versa. The Association was also promoting the nature table as "nature museums for the classroom".

The British Naturalists’ Association is proud to have this strong tradition from its earliest days of encouraging youngsters to discover more about natural history.

Do you remember a pot of pussy-willow on the school nature table of your youth, and how you were fascinated by the silkiness of what looked like grey-white fur emerging from buds? It is alarming that today too many children have been robbed of this first hand experience of their natural world. (See some pressed flowers collected by an Essex school girl in the 1920s as part of her lessons).

BNA chairman Roger Tabor reflected: “Children need to be able to explore the country-side to gain their own experiences of wild plants and wildlife to create their own bond with the living world which will stay with them throughout life. If we have become fearful of the world we should not use that as an excuse to limit our children’s ability to play and explore the natural world, rather it gives us the responsibility for finding ways that can allow them to do so safely”

Country Living magazine commissioned a survey which alarmingly revealed that less than half of parents and grandparents regularly take their children out for a regular walk, and that of those that did fewer took time to stop and look at wildflowers or insects with them.

The Government have recently launched its “Learning Outside the Classroom” manifesto which is now recognising the need for children to become familiar with the natural world, and the real value of trips to the park or nature reserves, and of parents to introducing their children to such places as well. Why not take your children out with you on a local British Naturalists’ Association wildlife walk at a weekend, where as a family you can find out about the plants and wildlife as expert naturalists talk about the things you see? See BNA Events Diary.

[Also watch this space for the “Nature Table Project” to be launched by the British Naturalists’ Association with Braintree Museum, with the re-creation of a nature table in the Victorian classroom at the museum]