Thanks to a grant from Heritage Lottery Fund, Ferne Animal Sanctuary is running a project called Discovering Dragonflies. Dragonflies have been around before the first dinosaurs appeared. They are beautiful, inquisitive, incredibly aerobatic, and territorial – basically great to watch. This is why dragonflies are perfectly suited for generating inspiration for, educating about, and raising awareness of our natural heritage.
As part of this project, we would like to offer Primary School classes a chance to win a free wildlife and dragonfly ‘wonder’ day (would normally cost £280). A professional wildlife photographer with extensive experience of working in schools will provide tuition, inspiration and camera equipment so that the whole class can develop their observational skills, explore their natural environment and take wonderful pictures of wildlife.
This day can be either at your school or within walking distance, or at Ferne Animal Sanctuary, but for the latter; you will need to provide transport.
Send your entries to education@ferneanimalsanctuary.org which should be photo(s) of real dragonflies or of ones you created individually or collaboratively at school. Alternatively, you can e-mail your classes’ stories or even poems about dragonflies
To win the big prize, the class must be available on Tuesday 16th July. Deadline for entries is Thursday 13th June, and the winning classes will be notified by Friday 14th June.
There will also be ten runners up prizes of a free annual family pass for the teacher (and teaching assistant if applicable), plus free Ferne entry vouchers for all of the class.
The top prize in the competition is only available to Years 4-6 due to the practicalities of the photographic workshop. However other year groups are welcome to send in dragonfly pictures, poems and stories too, as they would still be eligible for runners up prize. Winning schools will also need to be within 30 miles of Ferne.
We will be sharing some of your photos, stories and poems on our website, Instagram and Facebook sites, as well as in our dragonfly exhibition to be held at Ferne later in the Summer.