We helped with shelter building and story telling activities for preschool children, brewing up hot chocolate, hammering with wooden mallets, tying ropes, telling stories, practicing communication and teamwork skills and getting lots of fresh air.
Wider application of key skills and basic skills.
Outdoor and forest experience learning.
Arts education, creative and heritage learning.
Conservation, biodiversity and climate change.
Organic gardening.
Below: exploring textures and touch in nature, Lincolnshire.
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Above: "What is this?" Child's found object, family walking session, April 2013.
Above: a pond is a good place for contemplation and observation. Wild places can sustain psychological resilience and wellbeing.
Below: Andrea Wright Preschool Manager.
Below: children taking part in Earth Day action and learning about responsibilities and sustainability.
Below: toddler looking for ladybirds in an old tree.
At First Peace Chaplaincy we encourage a supportive, nurturing culture, which builds learning principles and practices based on the real world, to give meaningful, relevant experience. This can lead to positive life long learning patterns, improved confidence and self-direction. We believe that most people, especially youngsters, want to be respected and trusted and want to co-operate in contributing to the community, in a responsible and sustainable way. We aim to encourage opportunities that build children's confidence and encourage mentors to experiment with approaches to learning which are filled with vitality and creativity. We recommend the use of positive affirmations with children. This creates effective self-regulation and provides tools in troubled or stressful situations, boosting self-esteem and helping create positive mental attitude, thinking and outlook. We encourage Trust Nurturing and PACE parenting, where playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy are key. This Opens communication, helping children to experience being listened to in a safe place. Children then start to explore, discover and learn.
Above: exploring.
We aim to: raise awareness of the vital role played by families in raising levels of attainment. We develop opportunities for parents, carers and guardians to support children and special needs family members. For example as part of our community awareness and well being work, we arranged an event where mental health service users and young people with learning difficulties visited the office of the Nottinghamshire Crime and Police Commissioner.
We work with families in receipt of pupil premium, including adoptive families and forces families. We also integrate these activities with initiatives for those who feel lonely and isolated in our communities. This often leads to intergenerational cooperation and sharing.
We foster involvement and encourage hands on seasonal creative learning activities, which promote an understanding of the power of nature and horticulture; the arts and heritage. This help children to transform their understanding of the world and their communities. One example is our popular annual photographic competitions.
We encourage family access to intergenerational activities, events and play-learning games. This develops compassionate and creative thinking, social responsibility, healthy eating and mental wellbeing, basic skills, understanding of and skills in animal welfare, environmental and social responsibility. For example: community, family and children's cooking sessions are popular.
Below: a little angel, Laxton Church.
We understand that arts activities, stimulate learning and creativity in all academic areas. The arts develop neural systems such as motor skills and emotional balance, aesthetic awareness, cultural awareness, social harmony and appreciation of diversity. Helping children to understand cultural heritage and history, builds self-esteem and pride in place and community. Children who are read stories and who are taught to listen to music become good listeners: in lessons, in relationships, in social care roles and may become more empathetic and compassionate. 2012 saw a 30% contraction in arts funding in the UK, this makes our work even more vital and worthy of support.
Above: exploring the girth of a tree.
We deliver landscape conservation skills development and promote outdoor education for all ages. We are working hard to help bees and pollinating insects. Our Moth-Watch Challenge had good community participation and turned up many colourful species such as the Poplar Hawk Moth.
Below: found objects.
Below: "discovering the peg" used to mark the strips in the medieval strip farming still practiced at Laxton.
Below: green spaces are important for children.
Our community engagement for all ages, in just one week, helped children's groups to: celebrate heritage festivals, take part in garden bird watching, countryside ID and pond adventures. Our community project on ammonites model making for children and our family kitchen food preserving project, has been important to our communities in lockdown, stimulating the documentation of the memories of participants. First Peace Chaplaincy set up fifteen virtual learning community event forums during lockdown, to promote thinking and awareness on a range of topics. Following this success and by demand, we will maintain this type of engagement as part of our ongoing programme delivery.
In contrast to the virtual world, our real world learning activities are popular and range from consideration of medieval stonework in Tickhill, South Yorkshire, to architectural furniture in Grantham and cooperation with SEND Nottingham, who work with hard to reach children and young people in an inner city area. We have been in demand in the community, to support cross-curricular immersive learning: developing compassion, spirituality, cultural and ethical experience, creativity, academic potential, social skills and outdoor learning possibilities. In one project, our volunteers helped families with children to check insect hotels, comparing designs to find out the preference of specific species for various designs.
We view citizenship within the context of a multidisciplinary field, a field encompassing politics, philosophy, education, sociology and cultural studies. Good citizenship creates the foundation stone of democratic societies.
Our Communities of Interest Learning Groups, come together to listen to each other, improve their debating skills and individual and collective views, share information and learning in an independent forum and enjoy inclusive conversations relevant to our cross cutting themes.
Recent debates have included:
Discussing good Ideas from Isaiah: ' They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore'. The group discussed the role of women and pointed to diplomacy as a tool to forge peace, women were often the diplomats, offered through royal marriages, both in the distant past and in modern times. After some difficult discussions about warfare and intolerance, the session ended with participants each contributing a line to a prayer for the children, the care givers, the vulnerable, the doctors and the animals in Palestine.
One online group discussed the question: "Why does modern life feel so empty?" After wide ranging debate, concluding comments included: " we can't have something in common with every person but we can be polite and say hello. It brightens the world to smile." "Communities can be cold and selfish, very unresponsive. The sunshine of friendship opens gates and comes in when you least expect it."
In October one of our rural "Walk and Talk" groups, explored the idea that the weather tells us when the seasons change, when day and night are more equal in length. One participant said: "It’s a good time to reflect on the balance between light and dark in our own lives and in the community, it is a good time to giving thanks for the harvest, our ancestors, teachers, the angels and spirit helpers, to make offerings, share food with each other and to work on our spiritual paths. "
Another group considered how "social oppression and injustice can lead to individual vulnerability and illness." Members considered the chaplaincy's work with people in the community, aimed at developing balance and harmony in our souls and spirit in the present moment, and gave examples of this bringing positive benefits. The group concluded that Heathen, Pagan or Christian prayer can give a sense of deep confidence and peace and that making offerings, sharing food with each other and working on our spiritual paths is fulfilling.
Our recent opening event for the Lent/Hilary term, supported our citizenship and democracy programme. Our Communities of Interest Learning Groups, considered examples of belief that have influenced statesmanship. The event looked at Sir Edward Grey's Foreign Secretary statement to the Commons, 27.11.1911. One member asked if the speech gave food for thought today, pointing to Grey's criticism of those MP's who called for Britain's "splendid isolation". Participants considered Grey's point of view, that this "would deprive us of having a friend in Europe" and that it would create "a single diplomacy from which we should be excluded". Participants looked at the speech in relation to Grey's statement (given in T. G. Otte's book, "Statesman of Europe) : "I always sum my view up as readiness to make a new friend whenever we can do it without losing an old one." A discussion considered if this approach to diplomacy, supported peace.
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