OWLS Nature Club

OWLS Children’s Nature Club

I discovered this club during Heritage Week. The event was advertised as a ‘Wild Kids’ discovery tour of Turvey Park in Donabate. I called the number and signed up my 6 year old, who loves nothing more than climbing trees and getting muddy. I dropped him to the meeting point and watched him wander off timidly with the other kids and ‘Mouse’ the leader. When I collected him after the 2 hours he was flushed, wet, muddy, in possession of a slingshot made from a twig and was talking at 100mph out of excitement about jumping ditches and making shelters. I signed him up for a year’s membership at a cost of €25.

We get regular emails inviting us to events. The club has an allotment in St Anne’s Park where we are often invited as a family to go and help plant, dig and grow vegetables. The leaders there constantly point out interesting facts about insects, gardening and other aspects of nature to the kids. The club is also responsible for the maintenance of Ashtown Nature Reserve where we spent a very pleasant Saturday afternoon foraging for fruits and berries. We were given recipes to use the fruits we had gathered and the kids loved helping to make and eat the jam produced from the damsons we collected that day. There’s another few weeks to go before we (adults) can taste the sloe gin we also made.

OWLS stands for outdoor, wildlife, learning and survival. It is a registered children’s nature charity and the aim of it is to offer young children experiences that get them in tune with their natural world, while learning and having fun at the same time. Events run once a fortnight at weekends at various parks and natural areas both on the north and southside of Dublin. OWLS also organise week long daycamps for children during the school holidays.

We are looking forward to the conker championships next Sunday and the many scary events planned for the weeks around Hallowe’en. OWLS Nature Club is perfect for those with young families who would like to spend more time with them exploring the great outdoors. Our children have thoroughly enjoyed every event we’ve taken part in and the relaxed, inclusive nature of the events makes them a lot of fun for the grownups too.

For more detailed information, a list of  events and benefits of membership see http://www.owls.ie

This piece was written for http://www.culch.ie