Squirrel Forest Campaign in Altenholz

The peace of the forest?

For a few hours the proverbial peaceful forest was banished when on 28th October at 8.30 a.m. about 100 children and 6 teachers from the Altenholz-Stift primary school met up with the foresters Wilhelm Oeltzen , who manages the part of the Stifter Forest owned by Richard Höhne, and Klaus Uhde from Kinderwald Kiel (Children’s Forest Kiel) to start a Squirrel Forest Campaign project. The children did their part in helping the forest and collected and buried beechnuts, just like squirrels do. The foresters gave them background information on woodlands and forests. Then they showed them how children can make an active contribution towards climate protection and told them about the squirrel game. Forester Oeltzen explained, “The whole point of the campaign is that trees can rejuvenate through seeds.” In Altenholz , as is the case nearly all over Germany this year, beechnuts and acorns are hard to come by, but the children did manage to gather enough after all.

The forest in school lessons

After that trees were selected. “Each child looked for a mother tree,” said class 2a form teacher, Wiebke Horstmann. Together with other classes they will soon be visiting these trees again as part of the science and geography lessons. “These visits will also be interdisciplinary, which means they will not only take place in science and geography, but also in German and music lessons,” Ms Horstman went on to explain, while all around her the pupils were busy making a “sofa”. The children fetched branches and tree stumps and arranged them in the shape of a horseshoe to make a forest sofa which will serve as a meeting place in the forest in future.

The initiator of this project was Susanne Simpson who is a member of the Forest Seeding Association (WaldSaat e.V.) and mother of a primary school child. Together with Kinderwald Kiel, which runs its own forest kindergartens, 30 to 40 further events are planned for next year with other kindergartens and schools all over Schleswig-Holstein. Kinderwald Kiel, as does WaldSaat e.V., aims to promote sustainability in education, like in the example of the pupils of Altenholz-Stift.

-The forest sofa -

Bilder: Kinderwald Kiel