Forest School

What is Forest School?

Forest School is a concept developed from Danish ideas of working with children and young people in the outdoors. The participants are encouraged and inspired to grow in confidence, independence and self-esteem, through the mastery of small achievable tasks.

Hands-on activities with natural materials develop practical and intellectual skills, which can all be linked to the National Curriculum.

The Forest School model has been found to work particularly well with children who struggle to achieve in the more formal classroom setting.

What happens at Forest School?

The Forest School programme consists of a series of six or more sessions for small groups of participants. A range of basic woodland skills is taught along with activities to experience and learn about the forest environment. Activities are selected to be appropriate to the skill level, the age of the group and the weather conditions, with each successive activity building on the skills already learnt.

Staff observation and feedback from the students informs the leaders, who can then adjust the way that they work with individual students, according to their strengths and preferences.

Examples of types of Forest School activities are:

Sensory awareness activities
Environmental art
Environmental awareness activities
Building camp fires
Cooking on camp fires
Mallet making
Making temporary shelters
Animal tracking

All leaders are fully qualified as a forest school leader and are police checked.

Forest School - Gallery

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