Outdoor learning
At Lansbury Lawrence, we are incredibly lucky to have extensive outdoor grounds. The main school building was designed with large accessible spaces on either side. We take huge pride in these areas, and over the years have landscaped them to maximise areas for play while also having natural areas to support habitats and maintain mature growth. Some of our trees were planted by royalty! We have a wide range of fruit trees, and our raspberry bushes are popular with the children when the fruit is ripe. Our ‘secret garden’ is home to chickens, and a small pond area too.
In 2018, we were awarded the Tower Hamlets in Bloom ‘Best Newcomer’ award, in recognition of our grounds. The following year, 2019, we went on to win the ‘Best Educational Establishment’ award.
Edible Playground
In 2018, the mayor of Tower Hamlets, John Biggs, officially opened our Edible Playground in one of our playgrounds. The Edible Playgound was designed and built by the charity ‘Trees for Cities’. We have a large area of raised beds, where we grow and harvest fruit and vegetables. Every child within the school has a timetabled half term to work with Joe, our school gardener, to learn about growing food through the seasons. We run family gardening sessions during school holidays, to continue the planting and harvesting cycle all year round. Have a look at the films we made with Trees for Cities below, for some planting top tips.
Eco Committee
Our Eco Committee is made up of children from across the school, who care about our environment. In 2019, they confidently spoke about how we have improved our energy usage, waste and biodiversity at Lansbury Lawrence, to an assessor as part of our Eco Schools progress. As a result of this, we were the first school in Tower Hamlets to receive the Eco Schools Green Flag Award. We are so incredibly proud of everyone at Lansbury Lawrence for all of their work making our environment a better place.
Forest School
We believe Forest School supports children to become healthy, resilient, creative and independent learners, while nurturing understanding and respect for our environment. Every child in the school has timetabled Forest School sessions. These sessions are currently led by Ms Boglietti, a trained Forest School practitioner. As part of our continued professional development programme for teachers, we have also trained Ms King (Early Years lead teacher) as a Forest School practitioner, as part of our on-going commitment to outdoor teaching and learning.
Leaf Art at Forest School
This week in Forest School, we were particularly interested in the autumn leaves all around us. There were such a beautiful range of shades and tones as well as the usual differences in shape and size. "There are so many leaves on the ground because it is autumn, you...
Hokusai’s half term of Romans, plants and more 🏛️🏺🪴
Hokusai enjoyed a full half term back in school by embracing their new topics and engaging with their learning both inside the classroom and outdoors. Students learnt about the rise and fall of the Roman empire as they explored the questions, "Who were the Romans?"...
The air we breath
The Eco Committee were planting trees in the school grounds today. We've had about 90 trees donated by the Woodland Trust. We already have lots of trees at Lansbury Lawrence, and our outside areas are something we are very proud of. We want to develop them further to...
Making Bird Feeders
Today we had our time with Joe the Gardener. He had made us such a fun lesson and we were helping nature. We got to make bird feeders to hang in the school playground. We took an I pad to take practice our photography skills too! First Joe had to drill holes into the...
Forest School Tea
It was a beautiful, warm afternoon for Forest School this afternoon and we began with a sensory walk, feeling the different textures, listening out for any natural sounds (trying hard to block out the man made sounds of the road!) and smelling different plants in the...
Playing with plants
Hokusai took their learning back outside yesterday afternoon, using Now Press Play to imagine having found a talking plant that needed protecting from a crazed botanist. Students learnt about plant reproduction and the role of insects in pollination as they saved...
Forest School Friday
This week KS2 had a great week in their Forest School sessions. It was so much warmer and we discussed how spring was finally here! We started the afternoon with a game of 'Early Bird Gets the Worm' where we had to race to catch the worm in the middle of the space....
First Forest School!
Year 5 had our first Forest School Session today, with a group of children going out into the Secret Garden to explore our surroundings. We used all our senses to explore the area and see what we noticed around us. There were lots of glistening snail trails, crunching...
Learning in our green spaces 🌼
As Hokusai's focus in science is now on plants, we have been making the most of the school's green spaces to identify, describe, investigate and explore. On a recent Roman plant hunt, the children were surprised to learn about the species of plants on our grounds that...
Forest School Friday
This afternoon it was KS2's turn to get outside in the cold and enjoys some Forest School activities. We started with a warm up game of Eagle vs prey.... because we really did need warming up! Then we explored the grounds to see what birds we could spot. Looking up we...