During Outdoor Education the children work through different levels, all aimed at allowing them to enjoy and experience everything the great outdoors has to offer.
Facilities
The site is 98 acres which provides endless opportunities to learn outside. A large chunk of the grounds is deciduous woodland with several dedicated camps or outdoor education areas. There are footpaths, trails and tracks for walking, running and mountain biking, there are lakes to raft build and stand-up paddle board on. We have sheltered camping spots where the pupils can spend nights under the stars. For the more adventurous, we have climbing walls to climb and clocktowers to abseil down! Other facilities includea garden to grow our own veg from seed, a willow plantation to weave from andwild flower meadows from which we extract natural dyes.
There are teepees, treehouses and tents for rainy days and year group camp outs. We canoe and kayak on the nearby river Wye or go to Snowdonia. We have all of the space for this in our curriculum and the consensus that time in the outdoors is good for the soul.
Sessions
Weekly sessions are held when the pupils learn various survival skills such as fire lighting, foraging, cooking on an open fire, shelter building, first aid, orienteering, tool use and team work. We have a large kitchen garden which is maintained by the children and the woods are a haven of dens, geodesic domes and of course the pizza oven.
Each year group has weekly outdoor education sessions in small groups. They could learn how to build different types of shelter with bowsaws and natural twine, tie knots, bushcraft, whittle and bake bread and use the apple press to make juice from the orchard. In the summer the children could be using fire steels to light fires, making nettle soup or extracting colour from plants to make natural dyes. There are also outdoor related afternoon activities, such as treehouse club and leaf pressing.
Outdoor Education is huge part of the weekly Saturday Discover programme, where they can practice their survival skills, foraging, gardening, cooking on a wood-fired oven and mountain biking. Boarders are often off on adventures in Wales; this could be the Brecon Beacons for gorge walking, camping and kayaking or Snowdonia for a trip to ZipWorld.