Our Story

Enabling children to explore, learn and grow in nature.

We began running Nature Child activities in 2021, in response to the needs of young children coming out of long periods of lock-down.

Witnessing the negative impact of excessive exposure to technology, confinement and isolation on many children returning to school, highlighted the need for a nurturing space for learning as a priority.

Volunteers helped to make a four acre site containing ancient woodland and meadow, safe to use as a learning and well-being space. Teachers, parents and children came together to raise funds that enabled children to visit our new 'Nature Classroom.'

Teacher observations and children's responses recorded a very significant improvement in behaviour, feelings of well-being and learning outcomes. Over 90% of children reported feelings of increased calmness, happiness or excitement to learn. Teachers observed improved communication, collaboration and motivation in most children and noted outstanding positive changes in some of the children who were finding in-class learning particularly challenging.

The Nature-Child CIC was established in September 2021 as a vehicle with which to move the project forward. Activities were created with the aim of providing a new powerful resource for the delivery of the New Curriculum for Wales based on authentic learning experiences across the six areas of learning and with the development of healthy, confident, creative and ethical children at their centre.

Localities Initiative funding enabled a short pilot with a structured evaluation framework to measure child and teacher response and established need in a larger number of schools. This took place in the autumn of 2022 and almost exactly reflected our initial findings, with over 90% of children and 100% of teaching staff reporting significant increases in attitudes to learning and well-being.

Budget restraints were identified as being a barrier however and despite all the schools involved wishing to use Nature-child as a resource, it became evident that regular, long-term funding would be necessary in order to help finance sessions.

More widely, it became clear that Nature-child experiences could be easily adapted and extended to benefit other children’s groups and families within our community. We began to make links and partnerships with other organisations, projects and land-owners that share similar aims and a community steering group was formed to help shape our future.

We are currently continuing to run Nature-Classroom activities for school groups, whilst carrying out community consultation and developing some new and exciting child and parent-led projects.

Our Aims

We aim to:

Enable children to engage with the natural world, themselves and others in positive ways.
Provide activities that increase levels of achievement, resilience and wellbeing.
Benefit local schools and other groups by stimulating, extending and enhancing aspects of children’s academic learning.
Create opportunities for parents and carers to enjoy wild learning experiences with their children.
Involve the local community through land sharing and job or volunteering opportunities.

Contributing to the growing outdoor learning movement

There are many published studies, including Plymouth University’s Study on Outdoor Learning, which acknowledge the benefits of learning in nature.

The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 identifies a need to facilitate activities that promote future health and well-being for children in Wales; and The Curriculum and Assessment (Wales) Act 2021 states that “Learners’ progress in the Health and Well-being Area of Learning and Experience can impact their progression more widely”.

Sarah Blackwell’s study, ‘Impacts of long-term Forest School programmes on children’s resilience, confidence and wellbeing’, references numerous research papers, all reinforcing the conclusion that outdoor play, exploration and learning are not only beneficial to young children but urgently needed. In Scotland, the 2010 Curriculum for Excellence through Outdoor Learning provides guidance and examples of good practice to help educators embed outdoor learning experiences within their curriculum.

Through Nature Child activities, we aim to make our own small contribution to furthering these objectives and creating a happier and healthier future for the children in our community.