Children invited to think ‘out of the box’

PETERSFIELD, U.K. - Feb. 6, 2015 - PRLog -- Bedales welcomed years 7 and 8 pupils from Boundary Oak School (Fareham) on 3 February for a day of thinking ‘out of the box’. The children enjoyed activities which encouraged them to view the world from a variety of different perspectives. The visit was part of series of educational events at Bedales for prep and primary schools.

Activities began with a snowy encounter with Hogarth and Leopold, the Bedales alpacas. Led by the school’s Philosophy department, the pupils considered questions such as how to describe woolly to someone with no touch, or the colour green to someone who is blind. Alpacas communicate with each other through noise, and the pupils were challenged to try and understand the animals’ communications with each other.

A second workshop looked at the experiences of people around the world who do not enjoy the same freedoms that we do in the UK. Focusing on the work of Amnesty International, the children made a candle card to promote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Having mingled with Bedales students over lunch, the visitors spent time with the Bedales history team taking a closer look at paintings and photographs from Medieval, Tudor and Victorian Britain, the Russian revolution, Civil Rights Movement in America and World War 2, only to discover that many had been manipulated to create a rather misleading record of history.

Keith Budge, Headmaster of Bedales, commented:

“The purpose of these visits is to encourage children to think beyond their first thought and develop their inquisitiveness and creative learning skills. It was a pleasure to see Boundary Oak pupils getting so stuck in to such a diverse and challenging range of activities”.