The Partner Sensory Walk is an outdoor learning approach in which young learners use their senses to analyse, perceive and develop a positive relationship with the environment around them.
Our Environment Officer, Angera Nduhukire, conducted a partner sensory walk with the members of the Environmental Kids Club at our school in the settlement. Today, she is sharing her experience.
Angera, tell us more about the exercises the partner sensory walk contains? How do you engage the kids?
“As introduction exercise, the learners were organized in a circle, and instructed to move only their necks, heads and eyes but not their bodies. I gave them 30 seconds to find something they thought was beautiful or interesting. After the 30 seconds, they were asked to turn their heads and face inside the circle. Each learner was given the opportunity to tell the group the one thing that they had seen and felt was beautiful. Based on the different interests there were a range of mentioned items including trees, grasses, crops buildings, soil and other. They learnt that different people have different and divers interests. In a second part, they were asked to form pairs of two amongst themselves. One person from each of the pairs was blind folded, leaving the other partner seeing and leading. The leading partners were tasked to take the blind folded ones on a walk to share their different interests. The blinded folded kids were invited to see the world around them through the seeing partners’ guidance and to use their five senses (smell, touch, hear see and taste) to explore their environment. The pairs were given time to walk around their school garden while smelling leaves and grass, listening to the surroundings, touching trees and grass.”
Angera Nduhukire
Thanks for the detailed explanations. Now, what were the participants’ reactions to the partner sensory walk?
“At the end of the activity, we converged in a classroom together with the learners and they each gave examples of what they had seen, heard, felt, smelt and tasted. All kids participated by sharing their answer. Hence the activity helped the pupils to learn to focus their attention and take details of things around them.
The learners found it exciting to run around with their blind folded partners, feeling the texture of trees and their leaves, grass, and other. Whilst in our daily lives we mostly focus on seeing, this exercise enabled the children to experience the importance of all senses. The pupils learnt that just as human beings, animals likewise depend on all their senses. Further, I encouraged them to value and protect nature, for instance in case they find animals and birds in an area where they are not supposed to be, like in crop fields, they should not stone them to death but instead guide them to the right place.”
Angera Nduhukire
Angera Nduhukire
GRI Environment Officer