The Outdoors at Waterbeach

We are fortunate to have a large outdoor space here at Waterbeach Community Primary School. From our forest school area to the orchard, field and vegetable planters the outdoors is woven through our curriculum and used to enhance learning opportunities for our children. Being outside has been proven to improve well-being and the school grounds are used in all areas of learning to develop children’s confidence and an appreciation for nature.

The Forest Area

Our established forest space is used by all children in our school to support their learning, and we also teach specific bushcraft skills such as whittling, den building and fire lighting.

The Orchard

To improve biodiversity on the school site, we planted an orchard of pears, apples and plums. These trees are traditional varieties that were grown in Waterbeach over 100 years ago. In our grounds we have seen foxes, squirrels, hedgehogs, grass snakes, great crested newts, frogs, woodpeckers and many more animals. The orchard has been used to observe local insects and plants and allows the children to observe changes across the seasons.

Playground areas

With the expansion of the school, there are plenty of areas outside that are used for learning by different year groups. There are paved and grassy areas for each Key Stage and children can often be seen enjoying the space for a story, maths lesson or even designing scale models of our solar system!