Good evening,
I wanted to take some time this evening to explain our fantastic forest school provision in school. We are delighted to offer all children forest school every week.
This year, we have really taken time to think about our forest school offer, making it as exciting, varied and interesting for all children. Merlin class have been making their own charcoal to design stone age art at Beedles Wood and Eagle class are to be Tudor Explorers ensuring they have set up camp with thought to location and to build gadgets from natural resources. It sounds brilliant!
For our younger children, staying on site to do forest school offers plenty of options; however, the older children need the larger wood to explore, develop and investigate. This comes at a cost. With the cost of the bus now doubled to £160 per trip to Beedles wood, we have had to be creative in how we can offer this experience whilst ensuring that we can sustain an offer.
Therefore, Little Owls and Kestrels have their provision on site for two hours a week (an afternoon); for Merlins and Eagles we have an hour on site every week and then boost this with two trips to Beedles wood every half term – this is approximately 13 hours of forest school over a 7 week half term (averaging at 1hr 50m per week the same as an afternoon a week).
I wanted to take the time to explain as this is more forest school than our offer last academic year. Without compromising our broad and balanced curriculum offer and keeping costings sustainable, we believe this structure is a good balance, ensuring that all children receive forest school. I am very happy to explain our thoughts further – please get in touch or pop in for a conversation.
We all appreciate our fantastic curriculum offer at Longnor. We look forward to inviting you into school more often this year so that you can see school in action. Thank you so much to those that attended our open day – we are very proud of the hard work pupils have completed and enjoyed sharing it with you.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Mrs Edgerton