Our Outdoor Education

In a world with ever increasing technology and social pressure, we like to see our free-range children at home in their skins - without a care in the world - slightly dirty - with messy hair and sparkling eyes!

CONNECTED
TO
NATURE

Applewood school is located in the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve, which forms an integral part of the Cape Floral Kingdom World Heritage site. Our biosphere serves as a living experiment that we can literally walk into, smell and touch. We get to see what others only get to read about. Our children have a first-class seat to observe how farmers use and interact with the environment within the Elgin Valley.

Our outdoor education programme consists of many facets: Syllabus-related excursions and camps, hikes, farm visits and Mountain2Coast. At the same time, we strive towards sustainable environmental practises at school. We hope to create free thinkers who might come up with local solutions to global sustainability problems.

From the Cederberg to the Karoo to our more local Overberg district – we camp – from Grade 2 to Grade 7. The more we camp the happier we are! On a social developmental level, camps afford our children an opportunity to develop independence, social and problem-solving skills, and a greater sense of self-knowledge. Giving our children the opportunity to be connected to nature as few other schools can.

We like to ensure that at least some of the roads our children at Applewood take, will be dirt. We can proudly state, that during their school careers at Applewood, our children cover a lot of Elgin Valley gravel by doing regular hikes. Across the grades, hikes are incorporated to form part of their day-to-day curriculum.

These hikes start off as day hikes or - for the older children - evolve into overnight hikes, and the children are always accompanied by their class teacher and at least one other adult.

A more recent hiking venture which has been gaining traction is our Senior Phase Summit Hikes. Senior phase children have the opportunity to sign up for a day hike once a term, throughout the year, where they summit a mountain peak within the peninsula. If we can impart the sense, that one goes to nature to be soothed and healed and have your senses put in order, to our children, we would have succeeded in our goal.

Being surrounded by major apple, pear and grape-producing farms in South Africa we are truly spoilt for choice. Our verdant valley provides Applewood children with ample opportunities to first hand apply the skills and knowledge learnt in their curriculum. From Grade RR (Busy Bees) our children are treated to regular farm visits which add colour to the tapestry of their curriculum.

Teach them and they might remember. Involve them - and they will never forget preserving their own olives, crushing grapes they have picked themselves, biting into an apple they just plucked off a tree, inhaling the fragrance of a dew fresh pear, meticulously packing fruit fit for the export market or even… bottling their own wine.

Children at Applewood learn and practise daily what it means to live sustainably. In the Pre-Primary, the children plant, tend and harvest a seasonal vegetable and herb garden. They learn how to grow and rotate crops and improve soil quality with natural herbs and composts.

Applewood has been running a smooth recycling system for years and recycling quickly becomes second nature to children at Applewood. They learn the difficulties of managing our waste and minimising our impact on the future.

We have recently installed a solar system which has reduced our carbon footprint significantly

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Our Outdoor Education

CONNECTED TO NATURE

CONNECTED
TO
NATURE