The humble nature table

A defining moment for my children

We had been out gathering and arrived home with some nature treasures in our decorated paper carrier bags. As the children rushed to place all their treasures on the nature table I went to put the kettle on. I could hear Molly (the eldest) helping Max (the youngest) with his treasures. I must have been longer than I thought making my tea as I went through to the sitting room all four children were sitting with their nature journal drawing their treasures. They had reached for their nature journal instinctively and I didn’t even have to mention it. I stood in the doorway and smiled.

A few years earlier….

We have been out on a walk and Harry had collected some lovely bark that had fallen to the ground. He took it home and the next morning he asked if he could take it to school so we wrapped it carefully in tissue and off he went keen to show his teacher. I got on with my day.

When I picked the children up Harry was clutching his bark in his hand and I asked why he was bringing it home. This is what he said….

‘The teacher says it is dirty and we don’t have anywhere to put it. She wanted me to put it in the bin but I hid it in my coat pocket so I could bring it home. Can we find a space for it?’

His wee face…. So we did just that and more. We set up a nature table in our sitting room and so began a long love affair with the natural world. Harry is now 28 and last year he went to the Phillipines and brought some natural treasures back because I saw them on his kitchen windowsill.

Not only did we build a nature table but, in time, we offered the children the chance of home schooling. The boys all jumped at it but Molly was at high school by this time so decided to stay there. A few months later she got a nasty ear inflection and was off school for a few weeks and got a bit bored so wandered downstairs to see what we were up to in home school and soon joined in. Molly went on to be work in conservation and she is now a content creator filming and writing about her life in the Scottish highlands -

Molly Ella

Home school is not right for all families but it was right for us. Both my husband and I were experienced teachers and with four children they felt like a wee group. It is a really big commitment but you don’t have to be a teacher to do it as the world has moved on since we did it and there are so many online learning options that you can support your children with.

People still ask me why we home schooled our children and the answer lies somewhere in the lack of a nature table. To me, this signified a gap in their education when they were quite young. This is the chance to encourage a life long love of the natural world and to show children that we are part of that world, not removed from it. Many teachers would have loved the piece of bark from Harry but I wanted to be sure that my children would get that connection with nature. The home school journey had highs and lows and a deep sense of responsbility underpinned it all. However, I was in conversation with Harry the other day and a fly had landed on the edge of his oil burner and he was off his seat in an instant to rescue the fly and release it outside. One morning when they were all small we took on ‘operation tadpole’ to resuce the tadpoles from the derelict pond next door before the builders arrived to fill it in. So not much has really changed.

My wee tribe of learners are all grown up now and forging their own lives but our home school journey binds us together and the most important thing for me is that it remains a community of learning. We taught our children from the start that we would be learning alongside them and that remains the case. I am just incredibly grateful that their father took on maths! x