Discover Wildwood... where learning comes naturally
7 November 2018
Take your class to meet the wildlife of Britain at Wildwood and help them learn more about the natural world around them.
Wildwood offer educational activities suitable for all ages through workshops, hands-on discoveries, guided tours and meet an animal sessions. All activities can be tailored especially for your school to make sure you get the most out of your visit. To support these activities there are free national curriculum linked teacher resources, which are available to download and can be used in advance of your visit, on the day or for follow-up work.
But don't take our word for it, come along and find out for yourself!
Early Years and Primary Activities
Exciting workshops - Our workshops are run by enthusiastic, experienced educators and are supported by a wonderful team of volunteers. All members of the team have been DBS checked and are experienced in the national curriculum. Our programmes cover themes including habitats, animal homes, skeletons, nocturnal animals and more.
Guided Tours - Wander through the woods to visit a selection of our animals at their enclosures. Led by a member of the education team, you can gain insider knowledge and get to ask questions. Tours can be focused on specific topics upon request or we can arrange a bespoke tour to ensure any particular areas of interest are included.
Meet an animal - Get up close and personal with our animals. Meet an animal of your choice (subject to births, seasonal behaviour, etc). Gain insider knowledge and get an opportunity to ask questions to find out even more.
Hands-on discovery - Get hands-on with a variety of our animal artefacts including antlers, animal skulls and animal skins. Children can touch, share their ideas and ask questions about the items. Can you guess what is inside our feely boxes? Items can be changed to suit a certain topic if required, so please ask.
Secondary Activities
Find out about woodland ecology, habitats, food chains, adaptation and conservation. Try invertebrate sampling (sieving leaf litter) and see how each animal forms part of the woodland food web. Go inside for a Super Sleuths workshop - a raucous team competition based on teeth, skulls, antlers and other artefacts - and understand mammal adaptation from first hand examples.
CSI: Who Killed Mr Bunny is one of our most popular KS3 workshops. It brings together adaptation, food chains and practical problem solving as students try to solve the woodland murder mystery. There are many more topics on offer and we can design a day just for your specific needs! See our full list of secondary activities
New A level and International Baccalaureate Activities
Wildwood holds a unique collection of British wildlife to inspire and enthuse your students. We include the use of our woodland flora and fauna and the animals in our collection within our expanded education activities. Our knowledgeable, experienced tutors will help you get the most from your day, and we can tailor sessions for your specific requirements and to meet your awarding body's programme.
Activities are offered at Wildwood for woodland ecology sampling and at a local coastal site including dune systems and rocky shores, where students can gain experience of surveying coastal environments.
Wildwood have also developed a special 2 day programme, where students get to experience survey methods, collect their own data and use the data collected in statistical tests with our tutors instruction. Tests offered include: Simpson's Diversity Index, Lincoln Index, Spearman Rank, Chi-Sq, Mann-Whitney or Student's t-test.
Higher Education Activities
Wildwood is able to offer college and university groups unique opportunities to expand students' learning. Having first hand experiences in species conservation, captive management and breeding, breeding for release, zoo management, ecological restoration and rewilding, small mammal trapping and other ecological surveying, means staff can provide students with a blend of academic and applied, experiential knowledge on such topics.
Whilst there is an institutional focus on the conservation of British species, staff are able to cover such topics potentially using either UK or overseas based project examples. Sessions can be developed to the bespoke needs of the college or university.
Email education@wildwoodtrust.org or call 01227 209620 to check availability and to discuss your visit, dates can get booked up fast, so please book as early as possible to avoid disappointment.
Contact Details
Wildwood Trust
Email: education@wildwoodtrust.org
Telephone: 01227 209620