Forest School

Forest School Intent

All the children at Highfield Infants' participate in Forest School sessions where they learn practical and social skills and are taught to understand health and safety issues. The sessions provide the children with an opportunity to practise managing risk in a controlled environment, promoting independence, fostering curiosity, encouraging information-based decision making and a child-led approach.  

Implementation

Creative Forest School lessons are timetabled for every class in Reception to Year 2 in four-week blocks.  This enables each class to experience Forest School every term so that pupils learn, appreciate seasonal change and hig-quality outdoor learning throughout the year.  

Forest School sessions are tailored to provide cross curricular support for the topics in the termly curriculum learning and may include activities such as shelter building, creating stick men, potion making, identifying trees, birds, flora and fauna.  Approaching classroom-based learning in the new context of an outdoor environment, and offering more physical, hands-on engagement, helps to strengthen and embed the children's knowledge and understanding.

Impact

Through Forest School, the children =will not only be more confident and resilient learners, but they will also become more caring and supportive peers due to the heavy focus the curriculum places on understanding and generating empathy. This will allow children will become more able to regulate their social, mental, emotional and spiritual health which means the children are able to perform better in collaborative learning and tasks, arming them with the skills necessary to improve themselves in their schooling career and life in the wider world.