At Michael Faraday we are super fortunate to have an inspiring, award-winning building and a fantastic big site as a space for the children to learn, explore and enjoy. Our curriculum intent is for the children to make sense of the world they live in and be encouraged to add to it, and therefore we really value and prioritise our outdoor learning opportunities.
At school, we already have a Forest School up and running, but we are undergoing a huge and very exciting project to improve and ‘forestify’ our gardens. Our aim is to increase the children’s opportunities to explore nature and wildlife. We have partnered with our local garden center, Walworth Gardens, who are ‘a charity dedicated to knowledge and nurture.’ https://walworthgarden.org.uk/
The garden at the Reception entrance (in front of the offices) will be named our ‘Well-being Garden’. We want to further develop this area to be a tranquil space that the staff and the community could use to take a break and to relax in the outdoors. All planting added would be wildlife friendly and would seek to broaden diversity by providing both habitat and sustenance and shelter. The climbers that will be planted against the fence should provide some privacy.
We are going to put in a pond in the area in front of the family room – which we call the ‘Discover and Explore Area’ . For safety, it will be fenced off and will be used for pond dipping, as part of our outdoor learning curriculum. The plan is to excavate and construct a wildlife pond using the spoils of the excavation to create mounds for planting and also to reduce the environmental footprint. Sleepers will provide pond edge resilience whilst pond dipping and for amphibians to shelter for safety.
The area next to the MUGA will be developed to be the base for our Forest School. The raised beds in this area are used by the Garden Club to grow our own vegetables and fruit such as strawberries. The orchard is also being opened up for the children to enjoy as part of their playtime and lunchtime experience.
Finally, in the gardens all around the school, the plan is to remove sections of the monoculture planting and to introduce more diverse low maintenance planting to compliment it. For example, we have an over abundance of birch trees and we want to bring more diversity, which includes evergreens, so that the gardens are not so bare during winter. Also, increasing the plants in our gardens will improve the air quality in the surrounding area.
Catherine, our Forest School Lead and Walworth Gardens will be holding workshops for key stake holders, so please watch this space for more information. We would love our community, including the parents, to be part of this project.
We hope you and the children enjoy the changes and the improvement to our Michael Faraday landscape.
Michael Faraday 