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Welsh practitioners go down to the woods for inspiration

Thirteen private nurseries and playgroups in Bridgend will discover how to promote outdoor learning through a new training scheme being delivered by the Woodlands for Learning team (WfL), which is part of Forestry Commission Wales. This represents a drive by the local authority's Foundation Phase advisory team to improve the outdoor learning skills of these settings.

The programme kicked off with two training days for 45 practitioners at the Rockwool Woodlands for Learning Centre near Bridgend, where they learned how to engage children in scavenger hunts, mud-based activities, blind-fold games and natural art. They also made stick figures and used their imaginations to create stories about their adventures.

All the activities are linked to the Foundation Phase language, literacy and communication curriculum and were led by WfL team education officer, Karen Clarke, who also devised the training. The training days focused specifically on working with two- to five-year-olds.

She said, ‘The non-maintained sector is not funded to the same degree as LEA settings so it can be hard to access training. These privately run playgroups and nurseries must still adhere to the Foundation Phase inspection regime to provide quality care and education so it is important to encourage practitioners to undertake training when offered despite the difficulty of releasing staff.’

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