Rosie Ambrose

This is Countrywide on RTE Radio 1.

And what do those lines mean?

So it came about just after the COVID lockdown.

The Parents Association got together and decided it would be a lovely safe space for the children to come back to.

We can see the benefits of bringing the children outside to learn.

We use the space as a classroom, but we've developed it further into having more forest school-based lessons that integrate with our new curriculum that's starting next year.

So we can massively see the benefits and

Absolutely, and actually we see that the children are much calmer when they're out here and they're ready for their lesson.

Children who might need a bit more movement throughout the day can move to other desks, there's just more space for that, but they're more settled and more ready to learn when they're out here.

Yeah, no, there's a real sense of calm.

You know, when we come down from the outdoor classroom, we can see that the children are much more calm and ready for the next part of their day.

Well, we try to get out all year round.

So the children, you know, we have our treetop Tuesday every Tuesday with the junior class and the senior class have started doing their forest school sessions as well.

And the children all bring the correct gear in and we come up for the couple of hours when we're under the canopy and the trees.

The weather doesn't actually get in and doesn't affect us.

So really the only times we haven't been able to come out this winter is when there was a weather warning in place.

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we're following the natural deer path here at the moment.

Basically it's a selection of trees that will encourage a red squirrel habitat to complement the area.

The grey squirrel had taken over quite a bit, but we're seeing more and more of the red squirrel kind of come back into play now.