Forest School | St Michael's Stone

Step into Nature

We are lucky to have our own small woodland onsite and extensive playing fields. Our canal side location also means there’s plenty more to explore just a hop, skip and jump away!

We've Got All the Kit

From ropes to tools, our kit means that we can offer the full forest school experience.

Happy Habitats

The staff and children enjoy creating and conserving habitats on site to observe, learn about and look after our forest creatures! Taking care of our world is key to our school!

Out and About

Our annual residential trip for Year 4 is an important part of our outdoor learning curriculum.

Down by the water

Thanks to a parent working party, our school grounds has now got a fantastic pond area ready to explore and use to develop knowledge across the curriculum Our children can engage in activities such as pond dipping, sketching, undertaking investigations and developing their conservation skills.

Welcome to our outdoor learning page where learning is an exciting adventure!

Outdoor Learning

Engaging in learning outdoors has many benefits to a child’s wellbeing, focus and enjoyment. All year groups benefit from outdoor lessons and taking the curriculum outside. Whether it be a maths lesson, science exploration, art work or story telling within our grounds, the children have a wonderful time learning away from the classroom and expanding their imaginations.

Forest School

We have 2 Level 3 Forest School practitioners on-site (Mrs Farrell & Mrs Wright) and plenty of exciting learning happening in our woodland area. Forest school is a worldwide initiative used to help children develop their holistic skills. They learn about themselves and others and how to treat the world around them. Children come along and learn new skills as well as a focus on team work and communication to support their learning back in the classroom. We promote individuality, independence, team work and problem solving which the children take on board fully.

At St Michael’s we have extensive grounds to explore including a woodland area, large field, pond area and an outdoor roofed classroom. This ensures all children have the opportunity to go outdoors and learn in different areas to develop different skills.

Year group work:

Early Years Foundation Stage

Both nursery and reception use the woodland on a weekly basis and the children have a fantastic time exploring. We undertake activities such as building stick houses for the gruffalo characters, plant and leaf hunts, mini beast hunts, drawing the woodland and exploring the changes through the seasons.

Key Stage 1

Years 1 and 2 take their learning outdoor in their science, geography, art and many other lessons with their class teachers. The children explore the changing seasons, look for micro-habitats, build their own dens, explore fire lighting for cooking in small groups and begin to use tools safely to make pegs from sticks.

Key Stage 2

The children extend their learning in the woodland learning about habitats, food chains, similarities and differences between deciduous woodland and rain forests as well as environmental art. The children go back in time to the Stone Age in year 3 using nature to create hammers with rocks and sticks and bows with wool and sticks. In year 4 the children have the opportunity to learn how to cook on a fire and build dens learning specific knots ready for their residential trip to Laches Wood.

Forest School and Outdoor Learning