For each academic year the educational visits and visitors are carefully planned to enrich the curriculum, heighten the children’s understanding of various topics, and help them to experience learning in a different way. These events are always a highlight of the children’s school year.
Within Early Years, the Nursery and Reception classes have many visitors each year including Mystery Readers, Spud and Yam who tell stories through music and Farm visits. The Reception classes look forward to their offsite visit; this year to The Horniman Museum in Dulwich where they enjoyed a range of activities.
In Key Stage 1, the Year 1 classes enjoy trips which relate to the topics of Farm Animals and Castles, and Year 2 visit The Florence Nightingale Museum and The Environmental Educational Centre at Horton Kirby. The excitement for these trips builds in the classroom and subsequently the children continue to develop their knowledge on these field trips and have excellent opportunities to cement their understanding of work carried out in lessons.
As the children move through the school into Key Stage 2, not only are there many day outings, which relate to curriculum based topics, but there are opportunities to go on residential trips too. Years 3 and 4 have a three day stay at the Wide Horizons Centre near Wrotham and take part in a range of activities that promote independence, team building skills, problem solving and provide personal challenges. Children in Years 5 and 6 have a longer residential stay of four nights; their visit not only includes outdoor pursuits activities but also topic based work such as fossil hunting or coastal studies, as experienced at PGL at Osmington Bay this year.
These stimulating trips, organised by the teachers, are so important to enhance the children’s education, this includes the annual visit to Greenwich Theatre’s pantomime production. The whole school attends to enjoy some traditional pantomime fun before they break for Christmas – a firm favourite for both children and staff.
