Learning Team's Home Educators sessions
These new sessions have been a success, attracting bookings by Home educators to supplement their child's learning.
This September our Learning Team started new activity sessions for children of home educators.
These sessions are designed for children to visit the reserve with an adult, and participate in three activities as a more informal offering than our usual school trip sessions. Each session costs £10 per child and are booked online in advance. The sessions take around 2 hours.
In September these session were themed "Dive into Dragonflies" and were held on the Wednesdays of the month. The two sessions that featured pond dipping, a boat trip and a create a dragonfly craft were heavily booked.
In October there are two sessions on the theme of "Nocturnal Nature" and both of these have sold out. The October sessions are aimed at children ages 7-11 yars and include owl pellet dissection and making bat or moth out of larch cones.
The success of these new sessions means more are being planned in for times when regular school bookings do not dominate the Learning Team's calendar.
Learning manager Lizzy Pearce said, " We trialled these sessions after getting a lot of enquiries from home educators. They had to independently organize as a group to come in together to book our Learning Sessions. These new sessions offer a way for individual home educators to book the session for their child, and they attend free. Both can spend the rest of their day exploring our site together after their session has finished."
New Home Educator sessions are now in the planning stage and will be introduced in 2026.
