Forest School

Nature Days provides weekly Forest School sessions for Knelston Primary School children within the school’s grounds. This service is available to other local schools in their own grounds or by visiting a local woodland on Gower.

Through play, children have the opportunity to learn about the natural environment, how to handle risks and most importantly to use their own initiative to solve problems and co-operate with others.

Forest School programmes run throughout the year, for about 36 weeks, going to the same woods in all weathers (except for high winds). Children use full sized tools, play, learn boundaries of behaviour; both physical and social, establish and grow in confidence, self-esteem and become self motivated.

In order for the children to benefit most a series of sessions is required preferable over the season change so that they appreciate the changing environment. This could be a whole day or half a day a week for a term.
Nature Days also aims to incorporate forest school practices into curriculum based field trips for local and visiting schools. Therefore visiting schools can have a Forest School experience which provides a taster for what could be achieved in the longer term.
Our age group ranges from Nursery to A level groups but forest school is mainly limited to Foundation Phase and Infants.

Forest Schools will aim to develop:

* Self Awareness
* Self Regulation
* Intrinsic motivation
* Empathy
* Good social communication skills
* Independence
* A positive mental attitude, self-esteem and confidence

Small groups of 12 mean that more complex tools and activities can be undertaken but as this can be disruptive to classes a whole class of 30 can be accommodated provided a high ratio of school staff is available.

Activities undertaken include;
* Den building
* Nature awareness
* Treasure hunts
* Colour pallets and potions
* Tool work
* Building rope structures

All sessions are student led and so the activities undertaken depend on the children. A huge range of resources are available to help the children decide on what to do and also the season, weather and site will influence their decisions.
Initial sessions or stand alone sessions will be more teacher led with planned activities so that the children can try a number of different activities.

These sessions can be undertaken within a school’s grounds or at a number of locations around Gower.

Contact Nature Days for more details on prices for multiple sessions.