Forest School and Outdoor Learning

Children in the UK are now having fewer opportunities to play in an outdoor environment on a regular basis, Forest School and outdoor learning provides this regular opportunity and allows children to learn essential life skills and how to manage and take risks in a natural environment. This helps children not only explore and learn about the outdoor environment and the role they have within it, but it also promotes a number of important developmental areas. It encourages children to identify and manage risks that they may be faced with; to develop their communication, social and co-operative skills through team work and independent activities; develop their confidence and self-esteem and positive attitudes and awareness of others and through free play promotes imaginative development that cannot always be provided within a classroom environment.

At Upton Snodsbury C of E First School children are provided with an opportunity to experience Forest School and outdoor learning in our school grounds. All Reception, Year 1 & 2 children take part in weekly Forest School and Outdoor Learning sessions. Our aims of the sessions fits well with the schools’ value of ‘Where love for learning grows’ and provides the opportunity for this enthusiasm for learning to extend out of the classroom into the natural environment.

Below are some of the type of activities that we complete: 

Building shelters and testing them to see if they were stable and waterproof.

Children also used natural materials to create 'seaside' themed art. They used sticks to create a frame and then in small groups work together to make their own pictures. 

 Exploring the grounds and trying to identify common plants and animals. 

Creating treasure maps, learning about simple grid references to find the treasure, building pirate ships and role-playing being pirates, mermaids.

Pond dipping. We have caught a smooth newt, a water beetle and different types of larvae, but unfortunately, no tadpoles! 

 Planting trees and seeds and gardening around the school grounds.

Creating  our own fairytale scenes outdoors, making our own pictograms out of natural materials and looking at life cycles of plants and animals.

 Exploring the signs of Winter. Children have also made bird feeders and completed the RSPB Big School Birdwatch.