Land Trust launches strategy to get children outdoors

The Land Trust has launched a new education strategy to encourage children and young people to spend more time outside.

Working in partnerships with local schools and nurseries, the Land Trust is aiming to increase the amount of time spent by young people outdoors, and give them the opportunity to learn new skills, enhance their future prospects and make a difference in their community.

The time currently spent outdoors by children is worrying low. This, combined with a crisis in childhood obesity and mental health encouraged the Land Trust to act.

Over the next three years, the Land Trust will have a strategic focus on developing relationships with schools and nurseries within walking distance of its spaces.

The charity is investing in six new outdoor learning areas across their sites at Wellesley Woodlands, Bewsey, Kiverton, Old Hall, Silverdale and Hassall Green, while also training rangers and teachers as forest school practitioners, to enhance the variety of activity on our sites.

The Land Trust is also working with an external body, Nature-Nurture, to produce an education pack for use by local schools near our site at Davey Down. This will then be developed to provide some more generic learning packs to be made available to schools across the country.

There is already a huge amount of educational activities going on at Land Trust sites across the country, with the number of school visits rising from 3,500 to 7,500 over the last five years.

Elba Park is a site playing a lead role in this work and was awarded Land Trust Educational site of the year after delivering activities to nearly 1,000 school children over the last 12 months.

Based in Sunderland the team at Elba have built excellent working relationships with local schools which has seen children enjoying activities such as geocaching, pond dipping, meadow sweeps, crafts, surveys and identification, bulb and tree planting, and heritage activities.