NATURAL WORLD
Our Forest School and Well-being Garden
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Summer 2024 Update:
Forest School classes are held each Tuesday from 13:30 - 14:30 and each Thursday from 11:00 - 12:00. In addition many of our Montessori classes are also held in the Forest School and Well-being Garden in fine weather. Within the garden, our Discovery Room has exciting activities, an en-suite toilet, baby changing and washing area. The planned upgrade to our lovely Well-being Garden with a Greenhouse/Potting Shed is complete and has richly extended the range of activities that we can enjoy with our children and families. The Greenhouse enabled a very early start to our sowing season and very soon the lemon and orange trees- which were over-wintering there - hda to make room for trays of tomato, courgette and sunflower seedlings. In the Garden we have fine crops of potatoes, beans and peas, along with many colourful and fragrant flowers including jasmine, clematis, honeysuckle sweet peas, cornflowers, agapanthus, scabious. poppies (lots!) and wild flowers. Our children have stored the spring bulbs ready for next year, and they are sprouting cress and mustard for flavoursome sandwiches, and runner beans ready for Summer crops. Many thanks are due to the Greenwich Neighbourhood Growth Fund (GNGF) for part-funding the upgrade, and to the local community who voted for us! ...................................... |
Our Forest School and Well-being Garden, which is immediately behind Montessori House, on Siebert Road, was part-funded by a grant from The Neighbourhood Growth Fund in early 2019. Our lovely landlord, Ben, rebuilt the yellow brick wall and fence, and refurbished and reroofed the garage area which is now our ‘Discovery Room’. One of our fathers, Marius from Geo Contracts, was contracted to build the dividing fence, kit out the Discovery Room and build the Montessori Hut in the yard.
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Everyone got involved in developing the garden and forest areas; parents, teachers, trustees and students raked 1000 litres of woodchip, which was swung into the yard by crane! They rolled out and secured the grassy areas, laid the forest floor complete with fir cones, the beach and the tadpole pond.
They also built the ‘tree pits’ – lovely wooden benches which surround our trees, some of which have been sponsored (we have others still open for sponsorship). The children played as we worked and we noticed that they wanted to get involved with tools, especially hammers, to wheelbarrow woodchip and compost around, ride on the trolley and really loved ‘working’ with their parents. |
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Greenwich GoodGym were amazing. These guys run for an hour – do good deeds for 40 minutes and then run back to base. They coated all the fencing and the mini-shed with preservative, erected the trellis for the grape vine which was tumbling over from next door, and lopped overhanging branches.
The resulting outdoor environment is amazing! All our classes visit the Forest School regularly and we now have two weekly outdoor-only classes. We had an afternoon-tea ‘soft launch’ in July 2019 which was well attended by our families, and local community and we released our painted lady butterflies in celebration. |
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In October 2019 we were honoured to receive His Worship the Mayor of Greenwich, Mick Haynes, and his lovely wife Lady Mayoress Gillian, who ceremoniously lopped a branch and formally opened our Forest School and Well-being Area.
Our big plan to invite the wider community to enjoy this wonderful, restorative space with us has been scuppered for now, due to the pandemic, but we look forward to the fruition of our plans going forward. |
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‘No-one will protect what they don’t care about
…. and no-one will care about what they have never experienced.’ David Attenborough |
"Let the children be free; encourage them; let them run outside when it is raining; let them remove their shoes when they find a puddle of water; and when the grass of the meadows is wet with dew, let them run on it and trample it with their bare feet; let them rest peacefully when a tree invites them to sleep beneath its shade; let them shout and laugh when the sun wakes them in the morning."
Dr Maria Montessori, ‘The Discovery of the Child’
Dr Maria Montessori, ‘The Discovery of the Child’
