At Tudor Grange Primary Academy St James, we have a dedicated Forest School area that has been developed over the last few years. We are very fortunate to have qualified and enthusiastic Forest School leaders who are dedicated to ensuring that all children have an enriching experience. As such, we run at least 1 term of Forest School per academic year for all years groups.

Our Forest School Leaders are Mrs Luckhurst, Mrs Clarke and Mrs Hiorns (maternity leave).

Below is an example of the types of experiences pupils have at Forest School, from one of our historic blog posts:

Year 2 Forest School

Year 2’s experience of forest school took place in the second half of the Spring term, it included lots of exploring and collecting as well as contending with a variety of weather conditions.

Everyone loved looking under logs for mini-beasts, we found plenty of woodlice but wondered whether there might be different creatures to find at another time of year.

We enjoyed listening to the story Otto Blotter Bird Spotter, following on from this children were build nests  using natural materials. Some children enjoyed the additional challenge of trying to build their nests in the trees.

Using our construction skills next we moved on to making look out towers.

In maths we had been learning about pictograms so after collecting some data we again used natural materials to create pictograms.

One week we learnt all about hedgehogs and thought about their habitats. We then got very muddy creating our own hedgehog family using mud and sticks.  Some of us made some mud faces as well !

In the final sessions we learnt what type of sticks are useful for making a fire and found out how to safely add the sticks to the fire. Once we’d mastered this we were able to make a fire and use it to cook marshmallows which we thoroughly enjoyed.