Day Visits

The Sustainability Centre South Downs School Trips

Why book 'Day Visits ' with The Sustainability Centre South Downs for School Trips and Educational Visits?

We have a range of expert tutors, indoor and outdoor spaces for learning, a large woodland managed to increase biodiversity, neighbouring farms, live-in yurts, a woodland classroom, food gardens, compost toilets, an organic café, ponds, the local River Meon and an abundance of wildlife!

All of our educational programmes are based on practical hands-on learning linked to the National Curriculum. Activities include building with earth bags and clay, enjoying a trailer tractor tour of our partner farm or experiencing a day in the woods around an open fire. A visit to our Centre allows pupils to be active and brings the topic of sustainability to life.

Teacher Checklist

Risk Assessments
Inspection Visits
Resource Packs
LOtC Quality Badge

What activities are available during group visits?

We offer day trips and residentials for Primary and Secondary schools, as well as Colleges and Universities, with a wide range of topics and engaging activities all linked with the National Curriculum. All of these topics can be adapted to suit different age ranges.

KS1 Topics:
Where Is Katy the Caterpillar? - Habitats and Life Cycles (Reception)
Exploring Materials - Changes of Natural and Man-Made
Mini Beasts - Habitats and Life Cycles

KS2 Topics:
Caring for the Environment - Habitats and Water Conservation
Energy for Everyone - Renewable Energy Sources
Forest Skills - Bushcrafts and Team Building
Leave Only Footprints - Saxons In the Meon Valley
Local Food & Farming - Farm Tour and Sustainable Eating
Low Impact Buildings - Greener Homes
Sensory Discovery - Exploration Through Art and Nature
Stone Age - Life through the Stone Age
Working Woodlands - Traditional Woodland Crafts

KS3 / 4 Topics:
Botany & Plant Life - Science
Clean Energy - Science
Food, Farming & Permaculture - Geography
Forest Skills - Health and Well-being
Natural Building Techniques - Design & Technology
Team Building - Health and Well-being
World War 2 - History

Higher Education:
Willow Workshops
Tree Climbing & Rope Skills
Nature Connection & Meditation
Talk & Tours
Bushcraft - Fire Lighting & Knife Skills
Guided Hikes across the South Downs
Foraging & Folklore

Which Curriculum Subjects do you cater for?

Citizenship

Team building Personal development and resilience

We follow the permaculture guiding principles in everything we do focusing on Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share. For citizenship we expand on these ideas to work on students personal development and resilience, as well as their team building skills. Join us for a day of challenges, that will require good communication, tolerance for others and mutual respect to achieve results. Whether that's using planks and crates to cross the 'lava river', ski plank races or drainpipe challenge to shelter building, earthbag arch and water pistol tracking game.

English

Storytelling

Our main English related activity that we offer is storytelling, where students will hear a range of exciting and engaging myths and legends, fairy tales and folk stories about the South Downs, nature and mythical creatures. We can also include interactive songs around a campfire, the session takes place in our atmospheric woodland hall nestled in the trees with a breath-taking view. However, lots of our other activities support vocabulary development as students immerse themselves in nature and describe what they can see, hear, touch and smell and learn new language related to those topics. Many of our activities promote working together which allows the students practice their communication skills. They also have the opportunity to articulate themselves through debate issues, such as discussing the pros and cons different renewable and non-renewable energy sources. These inspirational experiences will certainly get the imagination flowing for writing activities back at school!

Physical Education

Orienteering Climbing

Get your students moving, with a fun and educational purpose. Our orienteering activity combines their map reading skills, with our 55 acre site to explore! Alternatively, join us for our team building activities including 'Lava River' and 'Ski Planks'!

Art

Sculpture Craft Design Drawing

Art is interwoven through many of our activities, we provide multiple opportunities for students to get creative in nature and allow their artistic side to flair! Whether that's sculpting with clay to design their own tree protector or craft their favourite minibeast, or learn how artist's charcoal is made and create a nature inspired drawing using the medium. They could be exploring all the different colours and textures in nature and crafting them into a natural mandala sculpture, or collecting chalk and learning how to naturally colour it using leaves to use flint to carve their artwork onto and take away with them.

Food

Where food comes from Seasonal Food

We work closely with our neighbouring farm to provide tractor trailer tours, learning where food comes from including meat and grain and the challenges faced between protecting the environment with rewilding and running as a commercial business. At the centre students also have the opportunity to do some hands on traditional cooking, working over an open fire cooking dough they've mixed to bake some delicious bread. Or after a foraging walk exploring the kitchen and herb garden, as well as the woodlands collecting local and seasonal ingredients to make a healthy stir fry or syrup. Using our green energy bikes to make their own smoothies, students think about food miles, organic produce and choices we make every day when we're eating.

Farm

Join us on an exciting and informative tractor trailer ride to our neighbouring farm! The farmers are experts at tailoring the content they deliver, so it is enjoyed by all who visit from primary to university. The younger students will enjoy seeing the animals including cows, sheep and lambs if you're lucky enough to visit in lambing season! They will learn about where their food comes from, including what different types of grain are grown. The trailer ride is a favourite of all, a unique way to experience the beauty of the South Downs countryside. Older visitors will gain understanding of how commercial farming operates, the challenges faced and the changes to more sustainable regenerative farming.

Wildlife

At the Sustainability Centre, we have 55 acres of woodland with an abundance of wildlife. Many of our activities revolve around the study of different fauna, including habitat comparisons of woodlands with minibeast investigations to wetlands with pond dipping. Learning about these creatures in their natural environment is fascinating, pupils will use classification keys to identify the different invertebrates and share bug facts thinking about the adaptions animals have made to suit the climate of their habitat. They will also discover the wider ecology of a whole range of mammals with our food chain activities, acting out predator and prey relationship in a fun game. We run nature walks across the South Downs National Park that include bird watching, also partner with our neighbour farm for a tour, before this we often play the bee game - where students can learn about one of our most important pollinators! Our aim is to instil a love of nature and for all living things.

Bushcraft

Our expert tutors teach a range of bushcraft activities that take place in our outdoor woodland, all of which are found to boost students confidence and social skills. They will learn some key survival tips including shelter building, fire lighting using a range of different methods including flint and steel and fire steels, tinder collection, foraging for edible plants and cooking over an open fire. For smaller groups we introduce the use of tools, practicing knife skills for whittling and wood carving projects.

Prehistory

Stone Age

Are you studying pre-history? Are you looking for a day to immerse your students in the Stone Age? Then come and join us at the centre as we explore the different eras! Starting with Paleolithic and how Neanderthals lived and survived, students will begin the day by handling archaeological prehistoric fossil finds and replica flint tools including axes. After discussing how they lived in caves and made cave art, students will have the opportunity to craft their own design using flint to carve into chalk they've coloured using natural pigmentation from leaves. Next they think about food, how they would have to hunt animals and learn tracking to skills to put to practice in our fun game! Moving into the Mesolithic period students will watch a demonstration of how our ancestors used to make 'glue' from resin, discussing how they developed into nomadic tribes with their hunter gather lifestyle, students will put this into practice making shelters in the woods. Lastly, the Neolithic time presents homo sapiens that most resemble how we live today, with the introduction of farming communities and settlements were established. Students will use quern stones to grind grain and cook a simple bread over the fire and learn how to weave willow to make fences.

Saxons

Saxon Settlements Arts and Culture

Be greeted by an Anglo-Saxon warrior in our 'longhouse' for an exciting and engaging interactive show and tell session of real and replica artefacts, students will learn all about these invaders, how they came to be here and the culture they bought with them. Discussing their religion and paganism, understanding they were buried with their possessions in the graves, that they worshipped many gods including Odin or Woden ( as he would have been known) and see jewellery depicting this as well as runes. Many items will be passed round for hands-on inspection including clothing, shoes, bags, belts, waterskin, coins and longhorns, can your students complete the challenge to blow the horn? It would used to call fighters to battle, students will attempt to make a shield wall. They will feel the weight of chainmail armour and what it's like to pull a sword from the sheath, in addition to seeing other weapons including bow and arrows, spears and helmets for protection. Finishing off the talk in style with traditional technique of lighting a fire with flint and steel. Followed by practical activities that focus on their life as farmers in settlements and growing their own food, students will either weave willow fences, grind grain and cook bread over the fire, collect herbs and make 'potions' or delve into clay archaeology and make their own piece of Saxon pottery to take back to school!

World War

War Propaganda Women in wartime Rationing The Home Front

Did you know The Sustainability Centre used to be HMS Mercury? Travel back in time to WW2 discovering how the site was used, taking a tour and exploring what they left behind. Students will enjoy an immersive and interactive show and tell experience from our expert tutor with original items including ration cards, ID cards, clothing token cards, gas masks, medals, clothing with British army uniform and much more! They will get to listen to records from the time on the wind up gramophone and play a game on an early pinball board, as well as learn some Morse code and try to send a message using lights. Finish off the day by completing our orienteering challenge to learn the history and development of the site.

Biology

Plants Animals including humans Everyday materials Living things and habitats Life Cycles Minibeasts Habitats Forest School Underwater Animals and Habitats Photosynthesis (KS3/4) Relationships in an ecosystem (KS3/4)

Students will delve deep into biology, KS1 and KS2 students becoming habitat detectives. They will investigate different habitats including woodland / forest, searching for minibeasts and exploring their life cycles further with the bee game. Alternatively, focussing on a wetland ecosystem discussing adaptation and pond dipping, the relationships of these animals are explored further in the food chains game. KS3 and above look into the ecology of the site, taking a botany walk, learning how to ID certain flora and foraging it to make a salve or a syrup. Use quadrats to compare biodiversity of different areas including grasslands and chalklands and make paper pots to take home their own seeds to grow.

Human Geography

Natural resources

Take a tour of our site and see how we've used natural materials and resources, then get hands-on with our building activities using chalk to make a rammed earth wall, cobb to build an earth oven and sand bags to create a bridge!

Physical Geography

Map and atlas Water cycles Environment Climate zones and biomes

Develop your map skills as part of our orienteering activity. Students will study an OS map of the local area, learn how to use 6 grid references and what the symbols in the key represent. When out exploring the 55 acre site, they will use a compass and understand it works.

Environmental Geography

Materials and recycling Sustainable living Renewable Energy Conservation

Our exciting new John Muir Residential focuses on conservation tasks, learn about the founder of National Parks and what we can do to help the environment. During day visits focus on renewable energy sources with a trip to a proposed wind turbine site, using anemometers to measure wind speed!

Archaeology

Join us for a full day of Anglo- Saxon history, as part of this exciting day, pupils will get hands on with clay archaeology. Firstly, they will become conservators analysing pieces of pottery in small groups to highlight the similarities and differences in terms of thickness, colour, texture, pattern and part of the pot. Next, we will discuss Saxon pottery and look at pictures, before designing and making their own pattern on clay to take away with them!

Sustainability

Materials and recycling Sustainable living Renewable Energy Conservation

All of our topics have sustainability woven into their fabric, as at the Centre we work alongside the Permaculture principles of People Care, Earth Care and Fair Share. We cover a wide range of topics including sustainable buildings, where the pupils take a tour of the site and discuss the different structures exploring how we've followed the 3 R's reduce, reuse and recycle in our projects, as well as make ovens, walls and bridges from eco-friendly materials. During our energy for everyone day, the focus of the tour becomes the renewable energy sources we have on site such as solar panels, ground and air source heat pumps. Students will have the opportunity to practically use green energy sources with our smoothie bikes and snap circuits. In our food and farming day, the smoothie bikes are used to discuss Fairtrade and food miles, with students also enjoying a tractor trailer ride to our partner farm. Our caring for the environment and botany days encompass exploring habitats and discovering the biodiversity of the site through mini-beast investigation, pond dipping and quadrat sampling. As well as conservation tasks such as making bug hotels and dead hedging. Our materials and change topic looks at how long plastic and other rubbish takes to decompose and think about what reusable objects we could use instead, in addition to working with natural materials such as chalk and clay to create art. Many of these activities act as a springboard for discussions about our carbon footprint and the effect it can have on climate change and global warming. Your students will leave feeling empowered to become the next sustainability champions!

Team Building

Join us for a range of fun and engaging team building activities, sure to get everyone involved and working together! Whether that's facing distance challenges in small groups where they have to traverse a space with obstacles in our ski planks, lava river and drainpipe trials or completing the hoop challenge and parachute games!

Forest School

What size groups do you cater for?

To protect our site we can only accept one class at a time for a visit (Max 35 students).

Is there first aid on site?

We have fully first aid qualified staff.

Do you offer access for visitors with disabilities?

We have wheelchair accessible grounds and facilities.

Do you cater for visitors with Special Educational Needs (SEN)?

We have specialised tutors trained in working with students with Special Educational Needs.

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Who are The Sustainability Centre South Downs?

The Sustainability Centre is an environmental education centre with a difference. We focus on teaching about all aspects of sustainability on our 55 acre woodland site, where we work and live, demonstrating sustainable living.