In March the Panshanger Park Forest School welcomed its 1000th pupil. This exciting milestone comes just two years after the school opened.
The school, which is a Tarmac initiative delivered in partnership with Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust, opened in February 2015 and offers outdoor learning programmes designed to build children’s skills and confidence of working and playing in the natural environment.
The Forest School offers six-week courses for schools, with lessons that feed into the national curriculum. Lessons are varied and include activities such as den building, fire lighting and natural art. Whilst each session has a lesson plan, with learning objectives set, child-initiated learning is always encouraged to allow children the freedom to explore. The Forest School initially focused on local school groups but has expanded to include home-schooled children and younger children under its ‘Nature Tots’ sessions.
This year, the Forest School programme will be extended to include River School, which aims to educate children about Hertfordshire’s chalk rivers.
