Close encounters of the furry kind for Lime Tree Primary School pupils

With class names such as Badger, Hedgehog and Fox Classes, an interest in the natural world has always been fairly high on the agenda for pupils at Lime Tree Primary School in Reigate, but the children had a chance to take that to the next level recently on a trip to the British Wildlife Centre in Lingfield.

Under the guidance of Year One teacher Kylie Mitchell, 90 children spent a day learning about wildlife and the natural environment, as a culmination of their ‘Enchanted Woodlands’ class project. “It was a wonderful eye-opening experience for the children – they all got to see their class name animals, and watched a hedgehog curl up into a ball, which they particularly loved watching,” Ms Mitchell explained. “Some of them had never seen the animals in the wild like this before.

“They’d spent so long studying the topic, to see it come to life like this in front of their eyes was the perfect way to round things off, and made them appreciate things in a far greater way than any number of pictures on a page or a screen could do.”

Lime Tree Primary, which opened in September 2013, is a member of the GLF Schools Group, a Surrey-based multi-academy trust which now runs over a dozen schools across the south east, and is based on a model of strong collaborative learning.

“The Wildlife Centre was the perfect place to go to celebrate the end of the project, and I think our own badgers, hedgehogs and foxes are even more proud of who they are now, having seen their namesakes like this,” Ms Mitchell added.

“One of them told me this had been the best day of his life, which was wonderful to hear. When they’re enjoying it that much, they don’t even realise that they’re learning, and sometimes that can be the best way of acquiring knowledge.”