Visit to Longworth Forest School

Longworth Forest is situated on a 1.6 hectare lifestyle block boasting a forest of 250 trees. It is run by Linda Cheer, a teacher with 30 years teaching experience, who believes in play based learning. Three days a week, a group of keen learners, clad in gumboots, discover, explore and play in The Forest. Assisted Discovery Learning is part of daily life. The school is limited to 6 children who are 5 or 6 years old.  You can read about her school at Longworth Forest Weekly blog and her personal journey at Linda's Journey

See also the article in the latest gazette  Education Through Play 

For me I can see benefits in play based learning although the Longworth School is not practical for us as there are only 6 children.  We can however make more use of our "forest" up on top field.  I definitely think that children coming from ECE need to have more play in their day.  At South we are now running discovery days  fortnightly which is more often than in the past.  We have changed the format of these so they are not as organised as they used to be, allowing the children to be self managing. These mornings certainly focus on the key competencies.