Lots of things have been happening behind the scenes in recent weeks which are all starting to come to fruition. This will have a massive impact on opportunities for outdoor learning at our school. We are already fortunate to have quite large, rural grounds with a dedicated wildlife garden and we are so much more fortunate than lots of other schools. However our outdoor spaces are being under utilised for outdoor learning across the curriculum and it has been my aim to try and develop this.
Firstly, at the recent STEM Summit that six of our pupils attended at Hilderthorpe School, which I recently blogged about, JP developers committed to providing and delivering free materials to complete a large scale bug hotel on receipt of our design. Secondly our application to receive free trees throught the Woodland Trust Scheme was approved. In March we will take delivery of a selection of rowan, silver birch and cherry trees to create a small copse in an area of our school field. Then we heard that we were successful in on our bid to receive a Local School Nature Grant Award. This will bring us an amazing variety of resources to the value of £500 and includes a wildlife camera with night vision, bird feeding stations, a frog/toad hotel, a forest floor mat to sit on, a tarpaulin to create a den and other bits and pieces! We are very excited about this. Also as part of the the award, members of staff will be wrapping up warmly in January to attend a two-hour on site training session on outdoor learning. Finally we have just heard this week that out application that was submitted quite some time ago to receive bird boxes and a camera through Dogger Bank Wind Farm funding.
All of these things will put us in a very strong position as a school to develop our existing outdoor areas and enhance learning provision throughout the school. We will be looking for community volunteers to help us in the garden and with the tree planting so watch this space!