Outdoor Learning
Outdoor Learning
Tiddlywinks Nursery recognises the importance of outdoor learning, recognising that regular timespent exploring and discovering nature builds confidence, resilience and curiosity while alsosupporting emotional well-being. Regular outdoor activity improves gross and fine motor skills and supports the immune system.
Activities & Wildlife Garden
Children take part in daily outdoor activities throughout the day using both our main garden which joins the back of all our nursery rooms, as well as daily access for our older children to our wildlife garden.
Children play an active role in planting, growing and harvesting in our wildlife garden. They can be seen digging, raking and carrying watering cans and taking care of our vegetable patches. Children have the opportunity to try and enjoy the vegetables they have grown themselves, fostering lifelong healthy eating habits.
Children have access to a huge variety of play equipment such as a boat and sandpit, a hammock for relaxing or swinging, a slack line for balancing, a mud kitchen, slide, a digging area plus many more.
Our Forest School Sessions
At Tiddlywinks, we believe passionately in the value of learning outdoors; Forest School is an important part of the outdoor curriculum for our learners in the Lion and Monkey Rooms. We are lucky to have the use of Fitzmaurice School Forest School site for our sessions which is a great resource and means we don’t have far to go! We believe that Forest School offers a special space to learn through play in a natural environment which promotes happiness, growth, health and wellbeing; where wildlife and children can thrive, side by side.
Our Forest School Leader
Our preschool children have the opportunity to take part in weekly forest school sessions run by Cathy. Cathy works within one of our preschool rooms and holds a level 3 Forest School Leader qualification and has so much passion for outdoor learning. We believe that Forest School is an “inspirational process” which allows children to roam, let their imaginations fly and feel a sense of awe, wonder and connection with nature. It offers regular sessions in a woodland or natural environment where children can follow their own fascinations with the support of qualified practitioners, and where children can develop holistically at a pace that is appropriate for each of them. It provides a unique space, away from the noise of consumerist and screen-based childhood, to explore and build a sense of self.
Benefits of Forest School
A Holistic, Play-Based Approach to Learning
Forest school offers significant, evidence-based benefits for children, including improved confidence, social skills and emotional regulation.
Our early years forest school sessions nurture curiosity, resilience and confidence by immersing children in hands-on outdoor learning experiences that support physical development, creativity, problem solving skills and a deep, lasting connection with the natural world.
Creating a Nurturing Environment for Lifelong Learning
Forest School sessions are planned weekly giving children the opportunity to take part in a variety of activities, some of the activities we do at Forest School include: getting up close with plant life and wildlife, planting and caring for plants, making shelters for insects and mammals, climbing trees, digging and creating in the mud kitchen, building dens and shelters, inventing imaginative games which range across the site or small world play with woodland animal toys in the cosy corner, learning to use tools safety to craft with natural materials, playing games, singing songs and making up stories.
