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Bird Hide is located in the wetland, a protected open area full of nature with ponds, grass, trees and creatures such as birds, frogs and so on. The video was taken on my second visit just before the sunset.

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My first visit to Bird Hide in Bushy Park was just few hours after heavy rain in the early morning. It was hard to spot any other people as it was still spittin

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My experiences in Bird Hide at Bushy Park Wetlands

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My experiences in Bird Hide at Bushy Park Wetlands

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My first visit to Bird Hide in Bushy Park was just few hours after heavy rain in the early morning. It was hard to spot human creature as it was still spitting. The Bird Hide was soaked with water. There were no smell or coldness there. I stayed on the dried bench and started to connect with the nature with deep breath and deep listening.

From nowhere, I can hear birds. One sang, and other side bird sang back. Although I couldn’t see many birds, I could sense there were some as I listened to them. Water was still. I saw the sound of water when the bird dived in, but silent. I realised that we could see sound without hearing it. The silence also made the place alive rather than feeling of emptiness. The metal roof and raindrops from tree branches were creating rhythmical sound. I was alone but I could feel I was belonged to them. I didn’t need to ask for permission to birds or water. I was assimilated in the place. I felt free as I could choose what I focus. This was totally different experiences from watching a screen on TV. The visual image in the screen manipulates where to look, but the nature made me to focus to interact with them. This relates to how commercialised and computerised environment don’t promote creative play. Contrast to natural environment, those environments don’t provide open-ended resources which is necessary for creative play (Wilson, 2012).

The second visit was just around sunset in cloudy dark evening. Crickets were singing loudly without showing their beautiful shapes. Compared to the first morning visit, I saw lots of birds gathering in water. More and more different birds flying down on the pond with loud talk. They looked very active, and water moved around. Surprisingly, it was not resting time for the creatures. The cold air and muddy smell made me feel like I would rather go home and rest myself in a warm place. However, having a deep breath helped me to tune myself in the place again. Then, my childhood appeared with the place. It was my past memory, but it was there with that place. It is something like a fusion of past and present. I was feeling that this was different experience from daydreaming as daydreaming separate the presence from the imagination. The parallaxis through deep listening was happening in the presence.

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This musical composition was created with the memory of my childhood in the countryside of Japan.
I made a drum with a bucket and packing tape which produce similar sounds as a Japanese drum.

I recorded each sound and composed it together.

The rain drops on the metal roof shifted to the drumming sound I used to practice every autumn for the harvest festival. I saw an imaginative moon rising behind the trees as a lantern in the festival. The festival is starting, and we were all gathering to the sound of the drum and the song. I was in a community of my place with people I connected with. Afterwards, we were leaving the festival after having a beautiful time. There were silence again, but the raindrops were still making the rhythm of a drum.

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Through my visits at the wetland, I was reflecting on my childhood including how I made a sense of world while connecting to the nature around me. Fortunately, my parents were not keen on me doing lots of guided activities outside of care and school. Time, space and natural materials were given openly. My parents didn’t think I was wasting my time while I was exploring the world outside. I was motivated to wonder about the beauty, mystery, life and death, and patterns in the environment. According to Ruth Wilson, young children engage with creative play when there are no time pressures, and the way of knowing is from their own discovery through play (Wilson, 2012). Educators don’t need to teach their way of knowing but rather we can promote more opportunities for them to connect with nature by providing enough time, space and open-ended natural materials. This will guide them to discover how they are part of the nature.

During creating my creative response, all the drama about going to a festival came up from the sounds from creatures and natures, the stillness of surroundings, the birds’ movement in the dark. As sounds and songs participated together, the story developed. This also applies to the festival. As people participate together, we create drama with music and develop the relationship with others. The music and song are powerful message as language of expression. The process of collaborating music is a greatest learning opportunity for children to interact and connect with people (Angel, 2021). This provokes me how we should embed singing a song more frequently as a learning resource as like a story book. Singing a song together is a fun and innovative way for young children to learn while sharing joy with others.

Furthermore, after learning about the importance of movement in the former unit of Moving with Young Children, I started to run as I realised it enhances my physical and mental well-being especially during study. Surprisingly it also enhanced my deep listening through my country visit. As my inner strength and better lung function made my deep breathing effective, I was not only able to pay attention to my auditory and visual sense but also interoception. My brain was receiving various signals from different sensory system such as auditory, visual, and olfactory from the cold air in a bush. My interoception promoted positive experiences there. I was calm and enjoyed creativity there. This supports the idea of how strength training support interoception, my brain to receive the signals from whole body (Robson, 2021). I believe that children can wonder in nature more creatively with their inner strength as their attention to nature will be influenced by interoception as well. I am confident how important to support children's creative play while promoting physical activity. I also would like to pay more attention to how interoception influence executive functioning skills in early childhood. I assume whole body conditions and sensory systems are connected to each functioning especially to a brain.

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Angel, M. (2021). ‘Embracing the principle of participation: how a relationship with a young musician created powerful learning opportunities for a whole community’, The Challenge, vol. 25, no. 3, Reggio Emilia Australia Information Exchange, pp. 10–15.

Robson, D. (2021). Interoception: the hidden sense that shapes wellbeing. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/15/the-hidden-sense-shaping-your-wellbeing-interoception

Wilson, R. A. (2012). Nature and Young Children: Encouraging Creative Play and Learning in Natural Environments. Routledge.