We have known for a long time that “hands-on” way of learning and teaching is one of the most, if not the most, effective way of education. Left to ourselves we tend to gravitate towards just that. For some it is the thrill of discovering new things – even though the same may have been discovered by many people already – while for some others, it is the experience of having done it and the holistic learning that happens whilst doing it “hands-on”. Think of that spectacular sunrise at the Grand Canyon, or the first view of the stars in the near smog-free night skies of Death Valley – no amount of reading or seeing pictures can substitute the experience of witnessing it in person. That is not to say that we cannot learn from others’ experiences. We can and we should. But, to stop at that, would be, in some sense, incomplete.

Learning/teaching science has surely been one of the areas where this is very true. There are numerous examples of people creating/discovering new things only because they allowed themselves to experience things by doing them “hands-on” and not stopping after reading about things in a classroom setting, or listening to a lecture. We’ve taken this very seriously in putting together KidzJet Adventures – our way of introducing children to the nature around us, to learning about our surroundings – “hands-on”.

Day 1 involved an exploration of tide-pools at Pigeon Point. Tide pools are a window to the bio-diversity of our marine life. The crucial links between this ecosystem and the ones us land animals are used to is critical to our understanding not only how life evolved on our planet, but also how we are impacting it through actions actions at present. Our goal is two-fold. First, to bring the kids face to face with this ecosystem as we talk about the whats and hows, and second, to introduce basic scientific principles of observation, classification and deduction. Through creating the Nature Journal the children will learn to document what they observe and analyze their recording as they continue their journey.