Gardens

Our gardens are a very big part of the day here at The Gower School with every group enjoying outdoor play on a daily basis.

The gardens at the nursery are well-equipped with child-sized tricycles, balls and all manner of toys, as well as a beautiful, colourful wendy house and a separate climbing frame. There is a digging area, a growing area and also a separate decked area where our babies make the most of the gardens too.

Teachers maximise the use of the gardens whenever the weather permits for both play and educational purposes. The children often enjoy growing and planting exercises in our child-size planting areas, wet play in our water tank or even a spot of lunch outside in the sun.
The gardens are often a place for sociable meetings, such as fundraising tea parties and cake sales which are a regular event at The Gower School nursery.

At our primary site children have direct access to our three outdoor spaces, as well as a daily park play visit to Grimaldi Park.

Our youngest reception children have direct access to the garden from their classroom. This learning garden is equipped with a sand tray, construction blocks, small world tray and objects, whiteboards, paints, musical instruments, metre rulers and measuring jugs. The children also enjoy water play, they use nets for fishing in the dipping pond by the water play stand. They have access to the mud kitchen and digging area equipped with chalkboard, spades and buckets. The children can play shopping at the Home Area where they have a till, money, fresh fruit and vegetables, which they can purchase using their shopping lists. The garden has a beautiful apple tree and is a home to our resident Goldfish as well as our Guinea pigs Ginger and Fudge.

On our first floor we have a roof terrace space, outside the classrooms, where children learn how to care for the environment by planting, watering plants, trimming plants and sweeping leaves. There are plenty of opportunities to work or eat snack outdoors. Woodwork is also a popular activity which the children can do on their terrace space, which is part of the life skills curriculum.

The top floor of our school building has a large terrace, which is designed for learning about growing plants, as well as outdoor learning. The children enjoy outdoor art, quiet reading and eating snack there, as well as performing in their amphitheatre and outdoor yoga.

At daily playtime at Grimaldi Park the children can play ball games, use the play equipment for climbing, swinging etc, and play organised games. The school has invested in a range of educational resources which are brought to each play session – from dance scarves and ribbons, wooden resources such as fraction logs, identification of mini beasts, birds, leaves and even a portable mud kitchen!