Stepping out: journal of a nursery founder

A Level 3 trained forest school leader, I have been delivering forest schools for the past 11 years. Over the past nine I have delivered training for all settings within Swindon for Ecat, (Every Child A Talker) on behalf of the council, organised and assisted in the set-up of a few outdoor childcare providers, and delivered outdoor learning at many nurseries.  I wanted to provide the opportunity for my youngest daughter (who is 2) to play outside every day, and decided to extend this opportunity out to the community. Thus the idea of The Owl in the Tree Outdoor Nursery, was born.

We worked with the local council to find the right place. It took six months of searching until we found a suitable venue in Liddington, Swindon, a lovely village hall with amazing rural space.  We had been offered a few provisions which had closed; we had spent some time with a developer in locating plots of land. This became very time consuming. We held lengthy discussions with the village hall committee over a few months until a decision was agreed...and then we had our base camp! The hall is just a base camp, not our learning area, as we expect to spend just two hours a day here, welcoming the children in, having our breakfast and getting weather-proofed. At the end of the day the staff will come back here to reflect on our learning in a holistic way.