Our Outdoors

Woodend Country Childcare is set in the beautiful Cumbrian village of Lamplugh, just on the fringe of the Lake District National Park. It is surrounded by woodland and rolling fields which we use to our advantage, ensuring that children in our care experience a high quality, stimulating environment that they can explore and learn from.

​

Woodend offers a unique opportunity for children to experience outdoor life first hand, from nature walks, hatching out chicks and bottle feeding lambs to exciting creative craft ideas, water play and a sand den. We are fortunate to have active links to a farm, allowing children the opportunity to explore and engage with our natural world on a practical level. The large garden area offers room for play and exploration.

​

Our log cabin adds a new dimension to play, as children are encouraged to freely explore resources and interact in role play according to interests, which is outlined in the new Early Years Foundation Stage encouraging imagination, communication, language and making relations. Children are free to explore the environment and make independent choices. As a result, children develop high levels of confidence, self-awareness and a total sense of belonging.

“The outdoor environment is well-resourced, rich, varied and imaginative offering a wealth of opportunities for children to learn through their play.” Ofsted 2013

​

Our outdoors encourages children to engage with a range of challenges and alongside highly qualified staff children are encouraged to promote their own learning through physical skills such as digging, making tunnels, building structures and using bikes and scooters. The outdoors is appropriately equipped for all ages from three months onwards, with a gazebo for shade in warmer weather and a heated log cabin in the cooler months.

Physical development is supported by dancing, parachute, ball skills,  tunnels, see-saws and climbing frames. All children have an equal opportunity to explore and engage in all weathers.

​

Essentially we use our outdoors as an aid to learn about living things through animal husbandry and the introduction of our herb garden and vegetable plots and flower garden where children are encouraged to plant, dig, water explore. The vegetables and herbs are  harvested  to  produce and eat at lunch time. Our herb and flower garden offers a sensory experience beneficial to all our children however we feel it provides and essential stimulation to benefit children with special needs ensuring that all children benefit from our great outdoors.

New to the outdoors 2016 is a performance stage where children of all ages are encouraged to say a rhyme or sing a nursery rhyme or dance to music, while friends watch and clap when finished.

A large mud kitchen allows  small minds be creative and experiment with petals leaves and compost and water.