Outdoor learning

Outdoor Learning

Within St Peter's we believe that the outdoors plays a crucial part in children's learning and development. We have fantastic school grounds including three playgrounds, a large school field, a multi use games area, a daily mile running track, an outdoor classroom, allotments for each class to care for, two outdoor classrooms for our reception classes and a lovely woodland area. These areas are all used to enhance learning opportunities for children within St Peter's. The National Curriculum states that children should, 'Take part in outdoor and adventurous activity both individually and within a team.' We ensure that learning, where possible, is taken outdoors across all subjects and this promotes team building in a safe environment. Take a look at some of the children's responses about their learning outdoors and pictures of our cross curricular learning, which has taken place outdoors across the school.

Pupil interviews within EYFS

Amelia 'I made a bird feeder for the birds and put it outside for them to eat.'

'I found ice outside on a winter walk.'

Oliver 'I liked building the Great Wall of China outside, it was really big.'

'Outside is special because the bugs live there and you have to be quiet in the woodlands for the birds.'

Issac ' We can go to find things, I made a stick man using lots of sticks from outside.'

'We can play outside and I like the dinosaurs the best.'

'I liked gardening because I found lots of carrots and using different tools.'

Pupil interviews within Key Stage 1

Billy 'We do some maths outside and we practise our counting.'

'We took pictures of fog and frost outside on the trees.'

James 'We did a science experiment outside and we had an explosion in a bottle.'

Amelia 'We found plants in science and habitats in the woodlands.'

'We looked at following maps outside and we had to try and find treasure in geography.'

Pupil interviews within Key Stage 2

Eva 'We went and collected apples and made chocolate apples in worship for the Bishop's Fundraising Appeal.'

'We drew a bird's eye view of the castle on the infant playground.'

Jenny 'We made a woodlands nativity scene using natural resources.'

'On the field we made crosses and wrote special tags for Remembrance Day.'

Joey 'I like doing PE outside, the mile a day and football club after school.'

'We have looked at different plants and trees around school.'

Beech class enjoyed their outdoor learning as a way to learn their important Y5 spellings.  They worked in groups to follow an orienteering course to locate the spelling anagrams.  They then had to try and work out what the spelling was.  

Elm class have been weaving outside today. We are trying to make a border for the path! 🪵 

Science- Observing over time

To begin our Living things and habitats topic, Beech class explored our local environment for evidence of the different living things we could find.  We took photos and will return in the Summer term, so that we can observe what changes have occurred over time.

LOWER JUNIOR WOODLAND QUIZ

We've been learning about the trees which each class in St. Peter's is named after. We have tried to identify them looking at shape of leaves, flowers, fruit and bark.

Next we explored the school's woodland and tried to complete the quiz challenge. 

We can easily identify Silver Birch and our own name, Hawthorn with its Autumn berries and prickly branches. 

Today we learnt about sycamore, willow, oak and elder. 

Trees which are bearing fruit at this Autumn time are hawthorn, beech, oak, apple, rowan/ash and plum.

HARVEST 

Following our first woodland visit, we have observed the fruit ripening and have now harvested all the apples. we are making chocolate covered apples to raise money for the 'Bishop's Harvest Fund'.

Lower Juniors have helped the school and community to celebrate Harvest. Cedar and Elder have explained the reasons behind our Harvest celebration and we thanked God for his generosity. We learnt that we should live more simply so that others may just simply live. There is enough food to feed the world twice over, but our world's resources are not shared fairly. 

WE MUST CHANGE OUR HEARTS TO CHANGE THE WORLD.