Get your school connected to nature

What an amazing class trip! We took our year 1 class here in May to coincide with our science topic of ‘Plants’ and our upcoming science topic of ‘Animals’. The children were so excited and thoroughly enjoyed their day (despite many living in the area!). Aimi and Alice were amazing with them and had wonderful, age and curriculum appropriate activities, which were interesting and creative. The children particularly loved the bug and plant hunting and the clay model making. This was all made achievable by ‘The Friends Of Rye Harbour’ who funded the transport for us. I can’t recommend it enough for a class trip and even the one cold wet day of an otherwise hot and sunny week, didn’t spoil our fun! I have already booked for next year! Thanks.

The school is working hard on improving several areas in the grounds to encourage wildlife and children to share the space. Mapping the area together with Katie and Abi, showed us two things. Firstly, how important our space is, and secondly, what we need to do to vary and diversify the habitats and feeding provision to increase the different species we support. We are delighted to continue to grow our local knowledge, and now have a number of improvements being scheduled for the grounds to help our wildlife.

Every element of the Forest School Training course – whether theory or practical – was pitched to support the group’s various learning styles and I felt safe to make suggestions out of my comfort zone and stretch myself without fear of making mistakes… setting up the space together, collecting natural resources and collaborating throughout developed a strong sense of community and enabled relationships to develop quickly and meaningfully. I absolutely loved the whole experience.

I have never participated in training as enjoyable as this! A week on, I’m still feeling very inspired

The fully-funded Forest School Level 3 place from Sussex Wildlife Trust has meant I was able to access the training far sooner than I thought possible as I would have had to self-fund the course. This has meant that I have started to deliver forest school sessions to children who otherwise would have gone without, many of whom have no connection to nature and are already thriving in the early sessions.