Classical nature interpretation for special groups of older students
 
On our study tours, we have often seen groups of young people with a special background received by the nature interpreters. Groups that have trouble with the language - i.e. young people that recently entered the country, or youths with mental problems, e.g. retarded youths.
 
It is a pleasure to see, that classical methods of nature interpretation are alive and well in the entire Nordic-Baltic area. By classical methods, we mean inspiration by e.g. Joseph Cornell (www.sharingnature.com)  - i.e. methods that involve the participants in simple activities using several senses. Also, often several activities that are linked and together create a thread, which e.g. Sam Ham teaches (http://www.cnrhome.uidaho.edu/default.aspx?pid=70564). Both Joseph Cornell and Sam Ham have visited Denmark and inspired Danish nature interpreters. 
 
We don’t, in Raadvad, much use these methods on the average young people, but use them a lot with the youngest students. Here are some examples of classical nature interpretation as seen on our visits:
 
Used on the youngest students in our target group – the ten-year-olds in an Estonian fourth grade in Sagadi, we saw several examples – we were on an exciting trip through the national park and played, among other things, "Signs-on the-back"-games with the Estonian animals in the woods. Story telling and simple filed activities were also used, and the whole trip was exemplary and beautifully combined with the fine exhibition about the forest.

In Finland, a special class of sixth to ninth graders visited the Nature School. They sorted cards about the corn and milk’s way to the table on some string in the forest; they worked with sense-bags and played a nature quiz. They also played games of co-operation, with close bodily contact, in the same way that we would do with the ordinary students.
 
When in Sweden, we saw groups of new Swedes out with nature interpreters learning about Swedish nature in both Eskinstuna and Malmö. Neither place had any doubts that cooking together can be a road to intercultural understanding – the youths in Eskilstuna were also given the message about written and unwritten rules in Swedish nature in several ways, shown by example how to behave in nature, among other things. Apart from cooking, we picked berries, felt nature (and each other) by “hugging a tree” and by finding leaves and fruits and getting the leaves ready for laminating, so they could keep and be incorporated in the students’ vocabulary.
 
Considering how we as adults like to learn by playing, you could be inspired to expand the field that is given “classical nature interpretation”; certainly as a start of activities more factual and based on dialog, or independent activities.