Guest bloggers Siziwe and Margaret relay their introduction of the new SA Nature Journaling zine to learners - keep your eyes open for more about the zine in the newsletter.
Conservation Awareness by Siziwe Hlongwa (WESSA KZN Youth Chair)
‘’ Since sharks are classified as carnivores, what then excludes humans from their diet?’’
Was a question asked by one of the learners in Amanzimtoti Primary School during our shark diving presentation on Saturday, the 19th October 2024.
The school hosted a Schools Sustainability event on the morning 19th Of October, organised by Alice Surmon, Amanzimtoti Primary teacher and Enviro Club Co-ordinator. The event occurred right after the Marine Conservation Week raising awareness on biodiversity and conservation. Marine Week and the Amanzimtoti Primary School event exposed learners, not only from their school but also from the surrounding schools to green activities and talks on themes pertaining to birds, marine conservation and nature journaling. WESSA uMbogavango Environmental Educators, Siziwe Hlongwa and Sibusi Chonco were invited to raise awareness on shark conservation and asked to also speak about their shark diving experience in July. WESSA KZN Chair, Margaret Burger tackled nature journaling, exposing learners and teachers to this enviro activity one her green activities passions.
The programme began with an icebreaker activity which was lead by the Scout’s coaches. Groups were divided into three groups according to different schools and Scout clubs. It was a rotational session, and learners moved to different venues where activities were taking place including nature journaling, a presentation on a shark diving experience and different types of birds by a local bird expert.
Diving with sharks has been one of the most incredible experiences we have had, and one of this years’ highlights. Speaking about it and sharing with different audiences has been exciting for us as it has made us easily raise awareness on the amazing marine species and help others move from a point of fear to fascination with these amazing marine creatures.
Saturday was different, as we have only shared our experience with mature groups, we were engaging with primary school learners who found it fascinating hearing that we have dived with sharks but did not get bitten or died as most of us feel sharks are dangerous to swim with.
We had so many questions from learners, which came from a point of fascination and interest in knowing more about our shark diving experience and marine conservation.
We are thankful for another opportunity to raise awareness on sharks through sharing our shark diving experience with leaners, we hope that all of them gained understanding of the importance of protecting our marine species and they will also grow as Enviro Champs, protecting and advocating for the environment and also be the voice of our species.
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Bringing Nature Journaling to the Young by Margaret Burger (WESSA KZN Chair)
The Nature Journaling session at Amanzimtoti Primary School formed part of its Sustainable
Schools programme. The session was held in the courtyard close to the muthi garden situated on a steep bank. Our worksheet for each participant was the zine produced by Nature Journaling South Africa (more of that in our next newsletter) to encourage nature journaling through using a zine and forming a small book, full of prompts, to encourage Nature Journaling engagement and to have a small pocket guide enabling and inspiring a practice (in many different forms).
The first prompts we covered were traditional to the nature journaling practice, I Notice, I Wonder, It Reminds me of, and I Feel. We invited adding the date, context and noted that such data is relevant to citizen science and future observations linked to the current context. An A4 booklet with pages provided by the organising teachers provided an easy canvas for the learners.
Once busy the learners were encouraged to answer the prompts, firstly to Notice the surroundings. Response was varied as we leveraged learning from a general to a more specific description. Trees became Palm trees. Noticing the plants growing high on the Palm we Wondered how the plants managed to grow so high? We Noticed no roots and wondered how the plant so high up on the Palm managed to thrive despite no evidence of roots in the soil?
This Wondering fitted beautifully with our next prompt of It Reminds Me of… so we lead into the plant being described as having leaves resembling the horns or antlers of a moose, finally allowing us to name the Staghorn Fern. We wondered how ferns dispersed. We left that question unanswered with 2 of the groups. The Staghorn was labelled as ‘agile’ enabling it to reach the top of the palm due to its agility – with more time we could have taken the reproduction of ferns to the next sessions and deeper discussions around wonder. Sadly, we had but one morning.
Once the learners were engaged in journaling on their blank pages, we introduced the zine and handed a copy to each. We enlisted the aid of Scout master Madeleine Southey with folding the Zine who graciously came to our aid after a few attempts to practice the procedure in folding the A4 zine into a small book for nature journaling as a pocket guide.
Bongani Chisale took over with the next group, (the photograph above shows him standing next to the palms and the stag horn ferns on each of the palms). Bongani encouraged writing how you feel? One learner expressed ‘I feel like a doctor’ 😊
Coreopsis lanceolata (Tickseed), sadly is a highly invasive flowering plant that invades KZN grasslands with ease. But here we concentrated on how each petal was folded into a tube. We mentioned how the yellow is a wonderful dye.
The plants in the Muthi Garden were also of interest as a few learners could describe a succulent, a Spekboom or an Aloe vera. A beautiful Artemisia afra was brought to everyone's attention as a good plant to open sinuses and a blocked nose, the observation was made that the Artemisia reminds us of menthol and Vicks. The Artemisia inspiration led to production of a song for our nature journaling inspiration – this made our day!! (The platform software does not support video unfortunately.)
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