Imagine this:
A natural amphitheatre in a forest of beech trees, pine trees, hazels, field maples and yew. Underfoot are mosses and ferns, on the higher ground there are snowdrops and wood anemones, bluebells, violets and cyclamen. The forest is home to badgers, rabbits and squirrels. Birds nest here in the spring: bats fly at night. And every day, the children arrive.
This is our Forest School. Here our students come to learn from the natural world. From Nursery school onwards they come in all weathers, observing the changing seasons, learning to understand and respect the life of the forest.
Forest School demonstrates one of the ways in which our students learn, through hands on activities that spark their imagination and inspire them to respond creatively to the subjects they’re studying. As ever at Sidcot, curiosity and enquiry are at the heart of Forest School. In practice that might mean observing the effect of forces through creating a catapult, or building a den to a design brief; finding out about the senses by making a sound map, pollination through bee keeping, or narrative through storytelling. And how about exploring bone structure by making a wood skeleton or getting to grips with the principles of heat transfer through toasting marshmallows?
It’s enough to make you want to go back to school, isn’t it?