We believe that real experiences not only support learning but enables personal growth and social development, leading to happier, healthier children. We incorporate lots of trips and visits into our curriculum offer which the children always find exciting, whether it’s a walk to the local woods to learn about seasonal change or something much more adventurous.
Our residential visits are an important part of our curriculum. Not only do the children love them, they return from them walking slightly taller and with a new sense of confidence in themselves and with fantastic experiences to share.
In Year 4 our children visit Juniper Hall in Dorking for two nights. Whilst this is close to home, it gives the children the opportunity to be away from home whilst knowing that their parents are not too far away. They soon forget they are close to home though, as they throw themselves into den building, art activities, science investigations, learning geographical skills and much more, whilst also finding out a lot about their own local environment.
In Year 5 the children head to Little Canada, a PGL Centre on the Isle of Wight. Here they take part in lots of team building games and outdoor adventurous activities, but their learning goes well beyond this. They learn to support their classmates (and teachers!) who might be finding an activity particularly scary or challenging; they learn independence as we support them in remembering how important little things like teeth-brushing are; they learn how to get along with each other even though they might be challenged, excited and of course tired!
In Year 6 we take this a step further and incorporate learning about the preciousness of the environment with a step up in terms of outdoor adventure. We visit Pembrokeshire National Park, the only coastal national park in the country, and stay at St David’s – famous for being the UK’s smallest city. Here the children don’t climb on a climbing wall – they climb up the sea cliffs, they don’t kayak on a lake – they have the sea instead. Using the natural environment adds a further level of challenge to the activities and the beauty of the landscape there makes it easy for us to teach the children about the preciousness of God’s creation and gives us plenty of opportunities to consider our role as stewards of the earth.