School/group sessions
Where can the sessions take place?
- Natural Learning on your doorstep – kick start regular everyday outdoor learning on your site. These can be offered as demonstration sessions to look at what is possible with a whole class.
- Nearby Nature Connection – explore the benefits of getting off site by walking to your local park or green space. Get the multiple benefits of a healthy walk as well as developing positive links between your children and their local green-spaces and surrounding community.
- Wilder Spaces – go a step further by exploring a bigger and wilder woodland or green-space. This will make the most of supporting experiences and activities that need bigger and more complex environments.
What sorts of activities will be on offer?
These will be adapted to meet the needs of your group and will all have a hands-on approach with opportunities for children to work both as individuals and in small groups to explore and discover in natural spaces. The activities can adopt a forest school personal development approach, learning outcome focus or a balance of the two. Typical activities can include:
- Den Building with tarps, ropes and or natural materials
- Wild Painting and printing
- Sensory Exploring & Games – exploring a natural space through sound, smell and sight
- Exploring Wildlife – finding and learning about the plants, trees and insects that can be found on a site
- An introduction to Fire lighting
- Creating a natural mosaic – using plants and natural materials to create a paper based mosaic
Who will lead the sessions?
Sessions will be run by Jon Attwood and Jon Withers – outdoor leaders who both have a wealth of experience as forest school and outdoors. Ideally the sessions are also run involving your teaching staff allowing the class to be split into 3 groups rotating as a carousel – this will give groups more support and enable us to explore a wider range of activity and also more challenging activities. School staff will be given guidance and materials to lead an activity they are comfortable with. If this is not possible then the group can be split into 2 groups. Sessions can also be offered for multiple groups even up to the whole school.
How will the sessions be structured?
These can be delivered flexibly as approximately 2 hour morning or afternoon sessions (split around normal break times). This will often break down into some boundary setting and warm up games followed by three blocks of 25 minutes to explore a range of hands-on learning activities.
What other support is there to develop an outdoor learning culture in your setting?
- Ideas worth spreading - explore activities and build confidence in your staff team to enable regular everyday learning outdoors. This can happen through a twilight, half day or whole day session and will make a big difference to develop a consistent outdoor approach across the school. These sessions can also build towards accredited Forest School training at both introductory and leadership level.
- Bristol Schools Nature Reserve – create a wild space for nature on your site. From a carpark Starting from a space From a space the size of Join schools across Bristol in enriching your site by making it more wildlife friendly and develop more opportunities to support and learn about nature.
What will it cost?
A half day session with a class will cost £250
A whole day session working with 2 sessions (morning and afternoon) will cost £400
A whole day session with 2 sessions followed by a twilight session for all staff will cost £500
- please get in touch about costs if you want to organise a stand alone Inset session or accredited Forest School training.