Forest School
In the Early Years we carry out regular ‘Forest Friday’ sessions. Each week, we go out onto our school field and carry out a range of activities that give us an opportunity to explore in a different environment.
Research shows that children and young people are stimulated by the outdoors. Forest Schools is a unique way of building independence, self – esteem and a positive attitude towards learning. As children explore and experience the natural world for themselves, they experience an increase in their communication and language skills, problem-solving ability and also their emotional well-being.
During our sessions, the children experience a range of activities including: bug hunting, mud painting, collecting natural objects and building dens. Through our activities, we promote a sense of teamwork and the children enjoy working together to carry out their learning.
Each of our activities is carefully linked to the seven areas of the Development Matters framework and gives the children an opportunity to experience learning away from the classroom. Some children thrive from spending time outdoors and our Forest Friday sessions ensure that children get an opportunity to learn in their preferred environment.
This term the Nursery have had some wonderful adventures and shown excellent teamwork!
We have had great fun exploring the varied landscape of our forest school and Eco Garden in search of different types of wildlife. The children used their focus and persistence to seek out and find a huge range of flora and fauna.
They explored spiders, beetles, centipedes, slugs and snails hiding under stones and rocks. Whenever a new minibeast was found a small huddle would form around it so that everyone got a chance to take a closer look and study the features in detail.
The children used magnifying insect collection pots and magnifying glasses as they closely observed each minibeast.
We set up a class wormery to observe how the worms move through the soil and created mini habitats for snails too. The children were very kind and gentle with their finds and we always remembered to wash our hands too!
