At Castle Hill Primary School, we understand the importance of teaching Outdoor Learning. It is beneficial for a number of reasons, such as: It can help children to develop a deeper understanding of the natural world, improve their physical and mental health, develop their social and emotional skills, and simply be more fun than traditional classroom learning.
In order to develop our school grounds to make them the most engaging and accessible for our outdoor learning to take place, our school community worked with Catherine Eldred – A principle Landscape Architect (Part of Hampshire’s County Council’s Landscape Design Team) in order to design and begin to implement elements of our strategy plan. This involved engaging with the whole school community to gain a deep understanding of the ambition for the school grounds and creating a shared long- term development of both school sites. Catherine held meetings and workshops with staff, pupils and core groups and created an illustrated strategy plan for each site.
Please see below the final strategy plan for each site.
We are now at the exciting stage where we are beginning to implement these. We are starting with building a new sandpit for the EYFS area, building an outdoor classroom and a Book Nook at the Rooksdown site and hope to start working on the sensory garden at each site (with the help of the Eco Champions and wider community) in the new academic year.
Watch this space for updates of our journey, or even better, please get in touch if you are keen to volunteer or contribute in any way towards developing our outdoor area!