Male Courses in Durham

Active dads at Willington

Dads at Willington Sure Start enjoyed an eight week course working with and learning about nature. The group worked on learning all about their local environment and built bird boxes for the local birds. The dads and children had fun together guided by their tutor Brendan Rafferty. The children had fun helping to plan and build their garden area. Lots of planting and digging took place, with lots of dirty hands and faces as the children planted their flowers.

To mark the end of the course Brendan took the dads and children to Washington Wildfowl Wetlands. The group explored the different aspects of the wetlands, using their senses of smell, touch, taste and hearing. The children fed the birds and compared habitats and investigated the water features, the water wheel and Achimedes screw.

Active Dads have a weekend away

Dads and their children enjoyed exploring the environment around Moorside Children’s Centre. The surrounding environment with its beauty and dangers was explained to the dads and shown to the children. As part of their course the dads took the children away for a weekend at Earls Orchard in Richmond. Here the dads and children went on a nature walk to the local pond where they went pond dipping. Back at Earls Orchard the children examined their catch through microscopes, seeing for the first time a world never before experienced.

Earls Orchard is set in beautiful countryside in Richmond. The group had an escorted tour round Richmond Castle. The children ran round the battlements, looking down from the towers and picnicking while lying on the grass watching the birds fly above. The group had a fantastic time exploring and sharing quality time with their dads. An exciting educational course with a lovely weekend to finish on.

Get hooked on Fishing

Family Learning in County Durham worked in partnership with Get Hooked on Fishing North East, a social enterprise company aimed at helping the development of young people, to run a 10 week fishing course for fathers and their children to explore the benefits of learning and working together. Learners attended the sessions at Get Hooked on Fishing’s Witton Park base in Bishop Auckland every Saturday morning for 9 weeks doing 5hr sessions and ended the course with an exciting overnight fishing and camping session.

Men into Museums

The North East is lucky enough to have many interesting and innovative museums. One of our male courses is aimed specifically at making use of these facilities whilst encouraging men to become more active in visiting such places with their own families. Two six week ‘Men into Museums’ courses ran in 2010, one with dads and children from Timothy Hackworth Primary, the other with dads, grandads and children from Tudhoe Nursery. Both involved learners visiting a variety of museums and participating in tasks and activities aimed at developing literacy / numeracy skills.

Three museums were visited by the groups they were Preston Hall, Locomotion in Shildon and Hartlepool Maritime museum. Every other week the group had a classroom based session where they made and played games to enhance literacy and numeracy skills followed by a visit to a museum the next week. The course developed bonds between fathers, grandfathers and children, and provided learners with ideas of how to get the most from the fantastic museums in our region.

Sunderland Winter Gardens

Following on from the success of ‘Men into Museums’ at Tudhoe Nursery, the same group of dads, grandads and children signed up for a one day course in partnership with North East Museum Hub. They visited the Sunderland Winter Gardens, discovering and using a purpose made set of museum backpacks provided by North East Museum Hub and designed to give museum goers fun and exciting ideas to use during their visit. The backpacks were a huge success and, as you can see by the photos, the group had a very fun-filled and exciting day.

Rowing in Durham

Family Learning teamed up with Durham Amateur Rowing Club to offer an 18hr rowing course to dads and pupils of Ferryhill Business and Enterprise College. Each week the group participated in 2hrs of rowing, on the Wear in Durham, followed by 1hr Share Plus. The course ran for 6 weeks and the rowing was taught by a professional rowing coach from the club. After the 6 weeks the group were much more confident on the water and thoroughly enjoyed all elements of the course.

Nature Detectives

Nature Detectives is a 6wk course which has run in several schools and has been very well received in all of them. During 2009/10 4 courses were delivered across County Durham in 4 different areas. All learners from these courses achieved the John Muir Family Award.

One course was offered to dads/male carers and their children at Horden Nursery in East Durham. This course attracted 12 male learners and their children who attended the course held at Castle Eden Dene Nature Conservation in Oakerside Park in Peterlee. The group participated in activities such as tree rubbing, bird watching and examining the life cycle of a frog.

The same activities were enjoyed by a second group of ‘Nature Detectives’ from North Park Primary School in Bishop Auckland. Their course ran at Get Hooked on Fishing’s North East base at Witton Park near Bishop Auckland. As well as the tree rubbing etc. the group also built a very fine hedgehog hotel which many hedgehogs have taken advantage of since!

The third group of learners to enjoy a ‘Nature Detectives’ course was made up of parents and children from both Sherburn Hill Primary and Sherburn Village Primary in Central Durham. Their location was the English Heritage’s Grade II listed Hardwick Park situated in Sedgefield and steeped in local history. Here the group planted trees, examined the wildlife and enjoyed a lot of bird watching. They even built a willow screen for bird watching which is still in use and is now part of the park.

Finally, Newker Primary in Derwentside held their Nature Detectives course at their own premises. The course attracted 8 dads and children who enjoyed exploring and developing the school’s nature garden and learning about the insects and animals that live there. During the sessions the group made windmills, birds’ nests, mouse houses and a wormery. They also looked at the weather and recorded it on their very own weather chart and made kites and wind chimes.