Forest Schools

We have a wonderful Forest School area on our site. The area is off the main playground and sits alongside a Nature Zone and Chicken Coop (Peckingham Palace). Children engage with Forest School Learning alongside Mrs Denny and Mrs Ball, The Forest School Leaders. Each week they have opportunities to learn new skills, problem solve and work with nature.


The process helps and facilitates more than knowledge-gathering, it helps learners develop socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically and intellectually. It creates a safe, non-judgemental nurturing environment for learners to try stuff out and take risks. Forest School inspires a deep and meaningful connection to the world and an understanding of how a learner fits within it. Our approach to risk means that learners constantly expand on their abilities by solving real-world issues, building self-belief and resilience. We believe that risk is more than just potential for physical harm, but a more holistic thing, there are risks in everything we do, and we grow by overcoming them. Forest School therefore, helps participants to become, healthy, resilient, creative and independent learners.
There is lots of research out there to support the outcomes of Forest School, but we know that it isn’t just the educational outcomes and research that matter, our learners and leaders love it too!
Swanwick Primary School
South Street, Swanwick,
Alfreton, Derbyshire, DE55 1BZ