Our ‘Wild Days’ have become an integral part of school life at Oakwell Rise Primary Academy. During our Wild Days, children develop their wild experiences ‘beyond the four walls’, developing a variety of skills such as forestery, language development, fine and gross motor skills, keeping safe and understanding the world around them.
The Wild Days are an innovative educational approach to outdoor play and learning in a woodland environment, using a childs’ own interests, skills and inquisitiveness to build a unique programme that supports physical, emotional and cognitive development.
Tom from Green Man Learning, alongside class teachers and assistant teachers work together through a personalised curriculum. This experience allows children to work towards an accredited course via the Institute for Outdoor Learning.
Our work is rooted in our values:
- Respect for the natural world. This one goes without saying. At Green Man Learning we are all about looking after the world around us. We acknowledge that this world would do just fine without us whilst we would struggle without it. We have no other home and so we’ll be better off if we spend more time and effort looking after our precious little planet. In practice this translates as leaving no trace in the natural areas we work in, endeavouring to do no harm to the environments in which we spend time, using sustainable resources and recycling where possible.
- Play is serious business. It really is. There’s nothing more important than play, even as adults, we all need it. Play is where we learn, where we bond, where we relax, where we communicate and create. We think that if the world spent more time playing then we would have more solutions and less problems. So please don’t look down on us when we say we’re playing out, come and join us instead.
- People are our business. When all is said and done what we at Green Man Learning are really about is people. We want to make peoples’ lives happier and healthier. We happen to believe that this is best achieved by spending more time in nature, but if it wasn’t for the people we wouldn’t be doing this. We want to improve lives, raise aspirations, increase the connection people feel to the natural world, reduce stress, inspire creativity, provide opportunities for memorable learning, make people smile more, improve wellbeing, make people feel healthier and more wholesome. That is what we are really about