A quick peek at what ForestSchool provides for children:

Bug Hunting!

Understanding life cycles and food chains is part of the curriculum, but meeting them close up is a sensory experience! We see them, touch them, and hear them.

We get to know their habitat and their role in the environment. We overcome fears and get to know some of the biologies of insects, invertebrates, arachnids, etc.

We provide guidebooks and spotter sheets, magnifiers and nets, and pots to house the minibeasts the children find.

We love a bit of art!

Using our imagination and creativity to make... anything!

We work together or alone, using leaves, berries, mud, acorns, pinecones, ice, rocks, pebbles, conkers, sticks, string, and anything else we can find! It's a very mindful process, great for wellbeing and good mental health. A self-chosen calming time out from the hustle and bustle of school life.

We love trees.

We plant them. we climb them. we identify them, and we enjoy their shade and shelter. We know they house animals and insects. We know they need water and soil to thrive. We know lots of them are in danger.

We use their discarded sticks to whittle, we learn how to climb them safely, and we watch them for their buds and blossoms, as well as their leaves that turn into an Autumn rainbow.

It's a bit of geography and natural science, habitat and environment, observation and caring. Some of the most fantastic things about trees make us excited, like how they produce oxygen and communicate with each other.

They make us happy, we build muscles and coordination climbing them, we risk assess for ourselves and look out for our friends, and have really developed over 100 things to do with a stick!

They spark our imagination and fire our determination as we move from climbing the wide, low sycamore to scaling Grand old Mama Beech Tree!

READING! Looking at spotter sheets and guidebooks, matching tracks to pictures, identifying leaves and flowers, trees and birds. Reading poems and stories. Revisiting old favourites and learning new tales. We always have the opportunity to grab information from a fact book, or look up some details in a non-fiction volume, to share a story with some friends, or to find a comfy space and enjoy a book in the wild...

Engineering with Gutters! Used as Tennis Ball runs or water chutes. This feat of engineering requires experimenting with angles, length, height, speed, acceleration, slopes, balance, estimation, planning, designing, building, testing, trouble-shooting, altering, cooperation, collaboration, communication, explanation, attention to detail, and an awful lot of fun!