Our teams kids are lucky, cursed or lucky i guess dependant on your point of view.
Dragged from sea to forest, mountain to snow, jungle to St austell and back again.
We were approached by a school to run some outdoor education, a wee trial period with half the school, ALL DAY, ONCE A WEEK, EVERY WEEK, now that is some progressive schooling ran by dedicated and forward thinking teachers and parents.
We made a plan, a survival course, for kids,, the school had used forest school before, it was fine, they wanted to progress to a mix of learning, adventure and physical activity all rolled into one exciting barely in control , loosely curriculum based epic…
To say it went well is kind of overly humble 😉
Thats was over a year ago, were involved with 2 schools now, we’ve had to do safeguarding upgrades, paperwork like you’ve never seen the likes of, policies, other stuff, extra extra risk assessments, and thanks to our hoofing team, dedication, late nights and unwavering support we cracked it.
There are pupils now going through their 3rd run of sessions with us, they easily identify edibles and non edibles wherever we are, they start the fire, they cook and construct, they are happy, faces glowing and ‘i could stay here forever’ regularly rings through the woods’, we crack projects that make them not even realise they are doing maths, the teachers love it as much as the kids, maybe more in some cases, we put on shows, cook, laugh and climb in the fresh open air.
Thanks to the teachers and the bosses for ambushing us and getting us to do this, for their continual infectious enthusiasm and tolerance of our admin skills, we all love it, it’s a challenge, it’s rewarding and its pure stoke.
“If you have a problem, if no one else can help and if you can find them, maybe you can hire: The Canopy Team .”