This May, Biodiversity Hawke’s Bay (BHB) and the National Aquarium of New Zealand (NANZ) want to give you some brilliant ideas and resources to help connect your tamariki and young people with nature and biodiversity with the Beautiful Bay in May!
Beautiful Bay in May (BBiM) is essentially 31 awesome activities to inspire you to get out in nature with your students. You don’t need to do all 31, just doing one will provide some excitement outside and will no doubt be easy to adapt for other teaching purposes too.
The 31 activities have been specifically developed using the Five Pathways of Nature Connection, which aims to build Nature Connectedness. Connection to nature describes our lasting relationship with nature, including emotions, attitudes and behaviour. People with a greater connection to nature are more likely to behave positively towards the environment, wildlife and habitats, in addition to greater mental wellbeing, lower blood pressure and less stress.
This year, we have developed specific resource packs to inspire schools that includes the 31 activities, extra resources to support the activities and even some simple evaluation to provide teachers with some assessment for learning across the activities too.
Keen to take part? Access the Schools Resource Pack for BBiM 2023 and let us know that you’re keen to get your class involved by emailing our education team with your name and your school name.
There will also be a schools adventure prize for a class to win! Just have your class or school participate in BBiM activities using our Schools Resource Pack, share your pictures and be in to win a school excursion with us (including transport) as well as Kiwi Conservation Club annual school membership. See further details below.
We are very keen to support evaluation of learners’ experiences with BBiM, specifically looking at their Nature Connectedness.
Our evaluation will use a very quick, simple, illustrated scale called the Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS), a measure developed to assess Nature Connectedness. It is a one-step measure which gets right to the heart of Nature Connectedness by simply asking learners to choose the diagram that best describes their relationship with nature.
We will send the postage-paid packs to you after you let us know you’re keen to participate in BBiM. You simply do the quick one-step evaluation in class before you start BBiM and then also after you’ve done one, or a number, of the activities. Then send the packs back to us and we will send you your class results once we’ve had a chance to analyse them. All children will be unidentifiable to us.
The process will look like:
We will also send a teacher specific survey pre and post participation in the campaign, but more aligned to your motivations to take part and how you found the experience with a chance to help us improve it for next year.
We are so grateful for any participation in this as we want to make learning experiences in nature as rich and meaningful for learners as we can.
Get your class or school to take part in the Beautiful Bay in May campaign 2023 and be in to win an awesome class adventure! All you need to do is:
1. Get your class or school to participate in our BBiM activities using the Schools Resource Pack for 2023.
2. Email us pictures or other confirmation of your school or class taking part in as many of the activities as you like
3. Wait to see if you have won the incredible adventure planned for the winning class to have a great day out in the Bay!
Your class (30 students) can either choose an exciting visit to the Napier rocky shore for a guided exploration of this awesome local marine environment, or visit the National Aquarium of New Zealand on a class trip with a session of your choice!
More Info
Hawke’s Bay's favourite tour company has generously donated transport for your class to come to Napier to visit the National Aquarium of New Zealand, or the guided rocky shore exploration with the NANZ team. Bay Tours and Charters have been hosting visitors to Hawke’s Bay for over 40 years, and they have the experience, knowledge and passion to make your trip a memorable one.
More Info
Your school will win a Kiwi Conservation Club membership with quarterly packs of 30 Wild Things magazines. Aimed at ages 5-13 year olds, this magazine make topics like wild rivers, marine reserves and worms understandable, engaging and fun using a range of articles and activities. Each issue also contains calls-to-action, so that kids and families can use their hands, eyes, and voice to make a real difference for nature. Volunteer coordinators (KCOs) arrange outings/meet-ups for members to explore their local beaches, forests and everywhere in between. Some clubs also get involved in local conservation projects like tree planting, creating lizard gardens or making nesting boxes for little blue penguins!
More InfoDaily from 9:00am - 5:00pm
(including public holidays)
last entry 4:30pm
Marine Parade, Napier
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