Our first Tree-Sure events were a great success with several hundred children scouring the park for trees on its first two days. Congratulations to the team of volunteers who worked to design and run the event.
Here’s a review of the event from Anjoline, in the top left of the picture above:
“My name is Anjoline, I am Canadian and studying in child and youth studies with Professor Sam Frankel and so this programme is all about advocating children’s rights and giving children a voice and what we are doing here is really hearing the voices of the children and getting them involved in activities.
So we are here a group of 8 Canadian students to learn more about your trees here and to work with children locally. The activities here at Preston Park went really well, we had a lot of people coming and they explored the Tree-Sure hunt and learnt more about the trees in their area, all the different types as there is such a vast variety of trees located in this park.
We did activities which are all relevant to the trees, such as slime making with the downy birch, known as the glue tree because it has a very sticky sap. It looks like a birch tree but has sap on the outside. Glue is a very necessary element to slime so we made eco slime. There was also the bug making activity where children got to use pipe cleaners to make some bugs as trees are home to many insects.
We had this huge sheet on which children wrote about what they thought of trees and what they loved about the environment and how Preston Park was important to their well-being and play. My impression of Preston Park is that it is a massive park with so much to offer, each tree is unique and our activity was a very important one to hold in this special place and we are glad we could share with the children our knowledge about the trees.”