Nursery World - Enabling Environments: Outdoors

Developing a challenging outdoor environment that is as exciting
as a forest doesn’t need to cost the earth, explains Jeanette Hill

Redcliffe Nursery School, in the heart of Bristol, is surrounded by high-rise council flats and located within one of the most deprived areas of the country. Our children have access, one day a week, to 2,000 sq m of Forestry Commission land, a 10-minute drive away, and everyday access to the school’s outdoor area.

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What became apparent to us was the extent to which the benefits of a forest experience were not being mirrored in our immediate nursery outdoor space. We aimed to find out why and set ourselves the goal of creating – on a very limited budget – a nursery space that could offer similar challenge, excitement and boundless possibilities of the forest.

Redcliffe is a National Teaching School and is comprised of a children’s centre and research base. The school, therefore, has developed a research culture, with staff regularly undertaking their own independent research to develop their thinking about children’s learning.

To research and develop the nursery’s outdoor area, staff observed how the children used existing resources, looked for ways to extend children’s learning and formulated a set of questions for analysis, including:

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