A 50-hectare classroom without walls in Melville
MELVILLE – Waldorf School learners recently spent the day at the Melville Koppies Nature Reserve and Heritage Site.
Imagine having a 50-hectare classroom for the day – the sky being your chalkboard and taking notes from nature at your feet.
Jenny Grice, a volunteer at Melville Koppies Nature Reserve and Heritage Site, said although Covid-19 had forced the Koppies to suspend all guided tours on Sundays, school tours were still taking place during the week.
Grice added that about 40 children of Bryanston-based Michael Mount Waldorf School were recent visitors of the site and they spent their morning learning not only about the birds and the bees they saw but also about the ‘toothbrush tree’. The tree ends were used to brush teeth and keep away plaque by those that lived there more than 50 000 years ago.
They were also shown a 500-year old restored furnace where skilled metalworkers smelted iron from rock to make spears, knives and hoe-heads. They also learned about lichen – a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship.
During the excursion, Wendy Carstens, manager of the nature reserve, and the retired teacher explained to the children that the Koppies was a 50- hectare classroom without walls. She said it could demonstrate it all from social sciences, life sciences, environmental education, to life orientation and art education.
At the end of the day, one child said the excursion was better than a tour of a chocolate factory to which a peer vehemently disagreed. Another just confidently said he had learned more there than he’d ever learned in his whole life.
