The children at Feniton Primary School have been enjoying taster sessions in their newly developed forest school in anticipation of it being made available to all children from September.
Over the last year, a pilot project was run with Year 3 and this has been hugely successful. The children have developed both socially and emotionally; their problem solving skills have improved, all whilst having lots of fun.
The children have been toasting marshmallows, building dens and doing woodwork amongst many other activities.
Sarah Walker, the chair of the school’s parent teacher association, told the Herald: “Please have a look at our online fundraiser and support us if you can. We have a Rocketfund (Crowdfunder) campaign running online until Sunday, May 9 at https://www.rocketfund.org/fenitonforestschool
“Our biggest initial investment will be in training a member of staff as a forest school leader to help with delivering the forest school sessions. This costs £1,200 per staff member trained.
“Additionally, we would like to buy a welly store, wood store and a mud kitchen for the forest school area. We also need to consider how we would make the area weatherproof so that the children aren’t restricted in their activities when the weather is poor. The costs to run the forest school will be ongoing and is something which the PTA are keen to support.”
Sarah added: “We’ve set our fundraising target as £5,000. This will cover the training and staffing costs for each year group of children (from reception to Year 6) to attend our forest school for one half-term (six weeks). In addition to the ongoing running costs, we also need to fund equipment.
“We value the contribution of parents, families and our local community and therefore are keen to offer some rewards to our supporters. We would like to offer a reward of some seeds (wildflower or sunflower) to those who donate £20 or more to support our fForest school. Please make sure to click the ‘reward’ link so that we can capture your address for seed delivery. If you select the £50 ‘reward’ then we can offer a personalised thank-you card from our school pupils. £80 would pay for an afternoon session of forest school for one class; £100 would pay for six children to attend forest school for six weeks. £1,200 will pay for a member of staff to attend a training course to become a forest school leader.”
Sarah said: “All the children are really excited about the opportunity to take part in the forest school sessions and we hope that with the support of the community we can make their wish a reality.”
For more information, or if you would like to donate but would prefer not to do this online, you can email PTASecretary@feniton.devon.sch.uk