Outdoor Learning

At St Cuthbert's, we understand the importance of outdoor learning for our children. The outdoor environment has massive potential for providing learning opportunities, with the fresh air and a change of scenery for our children from the classroom environment, it's so important for everyone's health and well-being. Children's results and performances have also been proved to be better, by getting fresh air.  Integrating learning and outdoor experiences, whether through play in the immediate grounds or adventures further afield, provides relevance and depth to the curriculum in ways that are difficult to achieve indoors

In the past 3 years we have installed brand new outdoor gym equipment, 2 table tennis tables, a new garden of reflection for our KS1 children, new playground marking for our KS1 area and 2 new climbing frames for our KS1 children. 

More recently our pond has had a make over, as well as our orchard area with the introduction of a new outdoor canopy classroom, as well as a new TLC  Hub (Teamwork, leadership & communication) adjacent to our KS2 playground.

As of January 2020 our year 3 and 4 outdoor spaces has been refurbished for those children, as well as it being used for lunchtimes. Each class has taken ownership of a planting bed and will plant and maintain them.

Seeds have been scattered in a zoned off area in the Orchard to form a meadow. A willow tunnel is currently being put up and will hopefully flourish come the spring, as well as a bug hotel.

More plans for the orchard are in the pipeline, so watch this space.....

We hope the picture slide below give you an insight into what we have achieved to date and what we are striving to achieve going forward.

We have had our TLC Hub for 4 years now, and it has been a huge success for both the staff and children. The children love the Hub as it allows a variety of activities for them to challenge themselves.

The Hub has so many benefits for our children, to include encouraging them to communicate more, become more resilient, to know that it’s ok to make mistakes, to work in teams, to make decisions and to problem solve. It has allowed our children to be creative in their thinking.

Here are some thoughts from our year 4 children about the Hub:

I like it because it is a great activity and it’s very creative. We have to use lots of communication. We use the Cube for Maths lessons, hooking the log and class activities. We use the maze for mystery games, crossing the river and thinking games.