Bespoke sessions for schools

We have worked with Joe for over two years now and him and his team have transformed our forest into an exciting and innovative space! He has taken the time to really understand our school and create a bespoke outdoor curriculum area which helps our children explore and really expand their knowledge. Joe has helped build up our skills set with our staff, giving them the confidence to run forest school sessions, he also runs a forest school on a Friday for our pupils after school. We continue to work with Joe, due to his friendly and positive disposition and his passion for the outdoors, which has helped us to embed a love of our forest ‘Dingley Dell’ for staff, pupils and our families. Thank you Within The Wood for inspiring our outdoor curriculum and all the fantastic experiences you have provided for our school. I would recommend that every school works with you and they too will find a whole new love for the outdoors which they can enrich their school curriculum with!

Joe came onto our site for Science Week which was based around the theme of sustainability. He worked with the whole school from nursery to year six with passion and enthusiasm. Throughout the week each year group came back well informed and excited about their experiences in Forest School. Joe was knowledgeable, energetic and well-organised. His unwavering energy was contagious and the whole school now feels more confident and energized to use our forest school area to its full potential. A wonderful experience , thankyou.

From start to finish, Within the Wood was wonderful. Communication around flexibility of the sessions was exemplary from both Joe and Imi. The site was wonderful and all the children were intrigued as we entered the camp. The activities for our Stone Age day were considered and things such as the ‘flint and steel’ fire lighting and mud mountain were crowd pleasers as well as topical. These learning experiences were things we would have been unable to deliver in our school so married with our teachings perfectly. The opportunity for the children to learn outside of the classroom was also interesting to view as many children showcased skills that we were unaware of. Foraging and noticing mushrooms and the nature that is literally on our doorstep is still a topic of conversation in class. I would 100% recommend Within the Wood to others and hope to visit there again soon.

Joe has worked with all our Year 7 and Year 8 students giving them a sense of excitement and joy in the great outdoors. Students learnt some valuable core skills whilst learning to work together and have fun. Joe is so good at working with all students and lets them explore and learn. We will definitely be using Within The Wood again. Thank you for this year and we can’t wait for next year already.

‘The best day ever!’ How staff and children commented on their time at ‘Within the Wood’. Education is all about allowing children to take risks in a safe environment and to allow their learning to come alive. ‘Within the Wood’ encompasses this perfectly. Joe leads the sessions with creativeness and care and each child is allowed to flourish. Learning beyond the classroom is essential in our world, especially since Covid. As a school we can not recommend these sessions highly enough. To see the children grow in confidence before your eyes is so powerful and essential for all children from Nursery aged upwards.

I brought my Year 3 class to Within the Wood for a Stone Age themed day earlier this year. We did lots of great activities including archery, fire lighting, den building and exploring the woods. The activities challenged the children to step out of their comfort zone. It was lovely to see some of the quieter members of the class come out of their shell and fully immerse themselves in everything that the environment offered. Joe was fantastic with the class – they were excited and engaged throughout the whole day. Even now they still talk about when we went to the woods. Joe’s skills, knowledge and professionalism meant that everything we did felt safe from a teacher’s perspective. He also made the children feel at ease, helping them learn how to safely take risks so that they could take part in the more adventurous and challenging activities. I would fully recommend Within the Wood to any class – the children’s confidence grew over the short space of time we were there and it was definitely a memorable experience for them.

Joe came into school to deliver an assembly which was in person to one class but streamed to the rest of the school via TEAMs. We asked him if he could possibly link talking about his job with our school STAR values of service, ambition, teamwork and respect. He did a fantastic job of showing the children the benefits of working with nature and how everything linked to our values. He explained clearly what he does and the path that led him to create his own company. The assembly was brilliantly delivered, and Joe had such a lovely manner with the children. They were all really engaged and came up with lots of questions to ask him at the end. I would highly recommend Joe as a practitioner to work with children in any activity and look forward to him helping us to develop our Forest School work in the future.