Forest School and Outdoor Learning

Our forest school places are available to our pre-school children, who are accessing their full entitlement of funding, or are attending the setting for the equivalent hours.

During forest school sessions the children are provided with many opportunities to gain skills, knowledege and confidence in the natural environment. Sometimes this is in our outside spaces and gardens at nursery and sometimes this is at our designated forest school site at Druid’s Wood near Ashburton.

Druid’s Wood is an area of mature Beech woodland, about a 10 minute drive from Woodlanders, and is a beautiful private and secluded woodland which is the perfect location for young children to safely experience being in the ‘wild’.

During forest school sessions the children get a whole morning of playing, creating, climbing, jumping and balancing in the fresh air.

We provide activities that teach the children how to use tools, such as saws, hammers, drills and whittling knives, safely and with the supervision of trained forest school staff.

The children can observe and learn about a variety of plants and animals which grow and live in the woodland and they will help to establish bird feeding stations, bug dens and get to enjoy woodland walks.

At Druid’s Wood we have a small fire to heat water for hot chocolate and we enjoy this with some fruit and biscuits, taking into account any allergies and preferences. The fire gives the children the opportunity to learn about starting a fire safely using a fire steel and we do lots of camp cooking activities too.

We aim to provide the highest quality of care with unique and fun filled learning experiences for all the children who visit our woodland site and through Tapestry links you will also get to see all of the children’s adventures at forest school (see more information about Tapestry on the relevant page in the About section of our website).