We are pleased to announce our partnership with Yorkshire Children’s Charity, Wastecare Environmental Trust and Elite Forest Schools, to support Sherburn Hungate Primary with their Forest School project!
About Sherburn Hungate Primary
The students and staff of Sherburn Hungate Primary (SHP), located just east of Leeds, are an inspiring community who prioritise the education and wellbeing of everyone who passes through the school. This is evident through the rapid growth of the school’s size, which originally only had one form per year group with 15 students per form. Fast-forward to today, they have expanded their class sizes and now have two forms per year group!
The Battrecycle team recently spent some time with the SHP staff, who explained during the expansion in pupil intake, the school quickly outgrew the school’s original values. So together with their students, they worked to create 26 new values, from A-Z, all aligning with what the students wanted to embody throughout their time at SHP. These values include:
· Determined
· Inclusive
· Mindful
· Respectful
The school prides themselves on these values and aim to never turn a child away when intaking new students.
On the back of these values, SHP have worked hard to educate the children on the importance of recycling and how they can implement it into their day-to-day life. The school is also split into four Houses, all championing an environmental theme - North is Electricity, East is Water, South is Sustainability and West is Recycling.
Why a Forest School?
SHP hope that with the rising popularity of social media among younger school children, building a Forest School will be key to encouraging them to reconnect with nature and enjoy being outside.
The school has a mixed intake demographic, with a large proportion of their pupils and their families living in poverty. Yorkshire Children’s Charity have been working with SHP for sometime now providing grant funding for specialist equipment for disabled pupils, along with winter coats, school shoes, and Christmas presents for children who would’ve otherwise gone without.
The level of deprivation in the surrounding area unfortunately means a lot of these pupils can lead very isolated lives – this includes not having access to local parks or green spaces outside of their estate, and likely spending the 2020 lockdown inside the same four walls.
This is where Yorkshire Children’s Charity, Elite Forest Schools, Battrecycle, and the Wastecare Environmental Trust come in!
As a result of receiving their grant, SHP have built their Forest School across two areas of the school grounds. Features of their Forest School include:
· Accessible walkways
· A sheltered seating area with a fire pit
· Sensory pathways
· A mud kitchen
· A den building area
· Planting areas with raised flowerbeds to allow accessibility for children in wheelchairs
The Forest School will provide not only a way to learn and connect with the natural world but also a space for self-reflection in challenging situations.
The children have also got stuck in to the build! They were tasked with designing a path for the Forest School, in which each child filled a square with stones of their choice to create a path that will allow children with accessibility needs to go to and from the forest school. The paths have been tested, and proven acceptable for the children’s needs.
We can’t wait to see how the SHP’s Forest School develops and grows as we move into the warmer months!
SHP’s Forest School is the first project funded via Battrecycle and has provided a brilliant framework on how we plan to move forward and roll this initiative out nationwide. Building relationships with organisations such as Yorkshire Children’s Charity and Elite Forest Schools is fundamental to us getting these community projects off the ground as quickly as possible.
If you would like to follow along with SHP’s Forest School journey or potential future projects, check out our website Battrecycle.org or our socials:
Battrecycle Funding Opportunities
We will be shortly launching our application process for community project funding via our website.
If you have any questions regarding the funding process, please to get in touch with the team at hello@battrecycle.org
Who are Yorkshire Children’s Charity?
Yorkshire Children’s Charity are a new charity that comes with a huge amount of experience and a big heart.
Their mission is to transform the childhoods of the thousands of disadvantaged children throughout the region. They want to make sure that no child or young person in Yorkshire is left behind due to ill health, disability, or financial circumstance. They work hard to give young people a fair chance: a chance to live an inclusive life, full of opportunities to explore, where they can engage in the world around them.
