Our Educational Ethos

At Wise Owl Nursery we embrace a mixture of two approaches, The Curiosity Approach, and Forest Schooling.

The Curiosity Approach

• Our nursery is a homely environment with a feeling of cosiness and warmth for all who enter it.
• We offer natural resources and textures opening up a range of possibilities for children to learn and explore using their senses.
• We use open ended questions with children, which stretches their imagination and curiosity, letting us into their minds.
• We encourage children to learn through their senses.
• We encourage curiosity and exploration. And when we explore – we discover!
• We use the real thing! Bright, shiny, and natural authentic resources rescued from car boots and charity shops. Resources that offer value to play, bringing a mixture of textures and stimulus that no plastic toys can offer.
• We choose calm, neutral colours for our play spaces so that the learning can shine through. The earthly tones give off a sense of calmness as colour can impact an individual’s mood, well being, learning and behaviour.

Forest Schools

• Forest School is an inspirational process, that offers ALL learners regular opportunities to achieve and develop confidence and self-esteem through hands-on learning experiences in a woodland or natural environment with trees.
• Forest School is a specialised learning approach that sits within and complements the wider context of outdoor and woodland education.
• We encourage our nursery children to develop a strong, positive relationship with their natural world.
• We offer a supported outdoor environment for our children to engage in risky play in an appropriate manner.
• We provide all 7 areas of learning outdoors at all times.
• Children can access the outdoors whenever they wish using the free flow systems we have in place (check out our “outdoor learning” section on this website)