Day Visits School Trip
Lee Valley Regional Park Authority
Waltham Abbey Essex EN9 2ED
Quick Insight - Lee Valley Regional Park, north east of London, is a huge outdoor space for learning. Your pupils can explore different plants, habitats and minibeasts, to learn about local wildlife and ecosystems. The park offers courses focusing on sustainability and why caring for the environment matters, the geography of rivers and lakes, or even the stone age. Your class can learn about plants, forests, and rivers, and even get involved in various forest school activities. During the visit, there are chances for questions and answer sessions, role play presentations, individual decision making tasks and presentations. Lee Valley offers a fun way for pupils to learn, try new activities and develop new skills.Lee Valley Regional Park is a perfect setting for providing a range of outdoor education programmes and our trained and accredited staff ensure each group gets the best learning experience from their day.
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What activities are available during educational visits?
Along with all the programmes above, we've Forest Schools level 3 trained staff on our team. We can deliver this service to your school within the Lee Valley Regional Park or at your school if you are local to us and have access to open spaces within your grounds. With sensory games, storytelling and woodland arts and crafts, this is a great session to encourage the kids into natural play and discovery.
Which curriculum topics do we cater for?
Design Technology School Trip
Architecture
These programmes focus on the epic design of Lee Valley VeloPark and how the features of the giant in London's landscape help make the venue a success after the Olympics. Now including the new Lee Valley Ice Centre looking at the sustainable building design, regeneration and biodiversity of the surrounding area.
Physical Education School Trip
Orienteering
Cunning Running is one of our programmes that introduces young children to the exciting sport of orienteering as well as building their team work and map reading skills. For older students, we've a range of orienteering challenges for them to get their teeth into.
Art School Trip
Multimedia
Our art sessions encourage children to use natural materials around them to create art. This could be through mud painting, clay sculpting or Hapa Zome. Our Mindfulness and Natural Art Discovery Day also uses these activities to help children practice mindfulness in the great outdoors.
Wildlife School Trip
The majority of our programmes incorporate learning about the amazing wildlife that call the Lee Valley Regional Park their home. Some of our key programmes are Habitat Discovery Day and Plant Discovery Day. More programmes can be found on our website.
Prehistory School Trip
Stone Age
Let your class discover the fascinating lives of people from the Stone Age with our Stone Age Discovery Day. See what was used for food, medicine and what skills our ancestors would have needed to survive back in the Stone Age.
Victorian School Trip
Industrial Revolution
The WaterWorks Discovery Day brings local Victorian history to life. Children will learn about the water cycle in Victorian London and how Essex Filter Beds played a part in the filtration process. These beds are now a wildlife nature reserve which is a great place to see nature in London.
Biology School Trip
Plants Animals including humans Life Cycles Minibeasts Habitats Forest School Underwater Animals and Habitats Ecology and environment Living things and habitats
A range of our programmes cover plants, minibeasts, habitats and life cycles of the creatures in Lee Valley Regional Park. Habitat Discovery Day and Plant Discovery Day are great programmes as children will get to see the wildlife and plant life in the different habitats .
Physical Geography School Trip
Water cycles Rivers Environment Fieldwork
Lee Valley Regional Park has a number of water bodies throughout its 10,000 acres that provide a great learning experience for children. Our Rivers and Lakes Discovery Day provides the opportunity to compare and contrast natural and man-made features of the meandering River Lea, the straight River Lee Navigation and lakes created from gravel extraction, and is one of the key programmes to cover this subject.
Team Building School Trip
We are in the process of redesigning this programme. I have put info for Orienteering as a teambuilding session.
Working in small groups, students take on the ultimate teambuilding challenge as they learn the fundamental principles of navigation. Teams are put to test as they explore our permanent orienteering course. Our score course tests tactics in addition to teamwork
Forest School School Trip
Our Forest School programme consists of a series of specialised, natural play-based programmes that put the learning back in the child's hands, letting children thrive and learn from real life experience in a natural setting whilst being facilitated by a trained Forest School leader.
Outdoor Learning
What size groups do we cater for?
The Learning and Engagement Team are happy to work with groups of all sizes - please contact us to discuss your requirements.
On-site classroom facilities?
All of our programmes are delivered outdoors in Lee Valley Regional Park. If an indoor space is needed, please highlight within your enquiry.
Is there first aid on site?
All of our staff for First Aid trained.
Access for visitors with disabilities
We have disabled facilities at our base and programmes can be catered to help with accessibility for any disabled visitors.
Visitors with Special Educational Needs (SEN)
All of the programmes offered in the primary and secondary school categories can be adapted to suit the requirements of groups with special educational needs and disabilities, or other inclusion needs.
Every group is different but here are some examples of sessions we have run in the past:
- Forest schools session - Supporting English as a Foreign Language students and those with mental health issues to build confidence and life skills.
- Orienteering (short and longer course available) - Supporting a diverse range of groups to develop teambuilding and skills to aid their independence.
- Mindfulness and Natural Art sessions - To introduce participants to simple mindfulness techniques they can use to support their wellbeing.
Please contact the team to discuss different options
Anything else?
The Learning and Engagement Team holds the Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge Learning and Engagement tutors are Makaton trained, hold a Forest School level 3 practitioner award and are Accredited Practitioners of the Institute of Outdoor Learning
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Visit our website for the latest news and events and stay up to date with what's happening by signing up for our newsletters at
Who are Lee Valley Regional Park Authority?
The Learning and Engagement Team are passionate about providing children and young adults with an outdoor education experience from subjects covering science of the natural world, local history, design and physical education based around London 2012 Legacy venues.
Our Discovery Days cover all key stages and key topics in the National Curriculum.
Older students can also build vital team working skills through orienteering and discover more about the park around them on guided walks with the team.
Our team have experience in providing sessions to students with special needs. Sessions can be adapted to the groups needs and staff are Makaton trained.
All this and more in the 10,000 acre Lee Valley Regional Park just waiting for your class to discover.
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Science, Geography, History, Art Feature
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