Outdoor classrooms can come in all shapes and sizes with variants for school needs and budgets. The Hideout House Company offer a truly comprehensive and diverse range of these type of playground buildings which take in octagonal, rectangular and square designs and which can be “themed” too – we have outdoor classrooms for special educational needs (SEN), eco classrooms where the building itself becomes a natural learning resource and forest school settings. Our buildings are manufactured out of cedar wood which has numerous benefits over traditional timbers (such as pine) including the fact that they are virtually maintenance free and do not require any on-going maintenance or further treatment once installed and they will last longer.

Outdoor classrooms are very popular in schools as they encourage learning outside of the classroom and teach children about the natural environment – that it is the reason we have options such as sedum living roofs, water butt and guttering systems for rainwater harvesting, educational renewable energy systems such as mini wind turbine/solar panel/energy monitoring board and power units including a datalogger, in-built planters and mini eco ponds. For the building itself, we can add in wall panels, louvre opening and closing panels for the window apertures, benching, decking floor with non-slip decking, ramps, steps and trellis panelling.

And in certain instances, we are able to help with funding for these type of outdoor classrooms.slider8

The SEN Outdoor Classroom

in a sensory garden setting

in a sensory garden setting

We get a lot of enquiries from SEN schools who are looking for outdoor learning experiences and outdoor classrooms which can be adapted to their needs. So as always, we have created our very own SEN outdoor classroom which has the following extra features: sensory planters, multi-coloured light panels, musical panels, sensory cubes which are either grass covered or with multi-coloured light panels, tactile wall panels and our renewable energy systems including dynamo bikes (or hand cranks for those children in wheelchairs) and wind turbines and solar panels.

We have also done quite a bit of research on the grant funding opportunities for these type of buildings for the SEN educational sector and the good news is that a lot of funders will support projects such as these. So please do talk to us about this.

For further information, please visit SEN outdoor classrooms

The Hideout House Company

www.hideouthouse.com   email: info@hideouthouse.com