Outdoor classroom and Skogsmulle partnership

Children at Dame Allan's Junior School enjoy lessons in their outdoor Woodland Ways classroom all year around. Children in the Early Years take part in the Skogsmulle programme, which sees them introduced to outdoor learning by befriending ‘Mulle’, a creature of the forest in puppet form who accompanies the children into the woods and teaches them about nature through songs, play and stories.

The success of the programme at Dame Allan’s has seen us share our expertise with Lingey House Primary School whose children benefit from the access to woodland offered in our otherwise urban Junior School site. Lingey House are working with the Early Years team to find out which initiatives and practical element work well, with the intention that they will set up their own outdoor classroom.

Impact

Impact of partnership work done in 2023 (ISC annual Census 2024)

25 state schools involved
501-1000 state school pupils involved
75 staff hours given
Impact Statement

Sixty pupils from Lingey House Primary School, Gateshead visited Dame Allan’s Junior School to experience an element of our overall Outdoor Learning curriculum. We sent our school minibuses to transport them to our school, at no charge.

Over the four sessions, children and staff were introduced to ‘Skogsmulle’, a nature-based pedagogy, built on experiencing through senses, and uses nature and children’s innate thirst for fantasy and play to develop learning and physical development. Our Reception teacher is fully trained to lead Skogsmulle, having spent two days in Sweden being trained on how to deliver the programme. She was able to give guidance on how to deliver the programme to the Lingey House practitioners, as well as delivering sessions to the children from outside of the Dame Allan’s foundation in our school’s woodland area. This work supported the Lingey House staff, who are currently training for Forest School accreditation. The staff give extremely positive feedback about the experience and they reported equally positive comments from their children. We plan to extend this partnership model to another local school this year.