A Parent’s Guide To Forest School
Picture your two-year-old with the freedom to explore, play, and learn in a classroom built from trees and a ceiling crafted of leaves.
Having not been to a nursery before it was Auraelias first experience of ‘school’, she’d just turned two so was one of the youngest. She started in the summer, so to anyone who asked “wow does she stay outside all day?” we’d reply in sunshine pastel hues “absolutely, she loves it” but ask us a few months in when she’s walking out looking like a human sized mud pie & we’ll have a slightly different tone to the same answer! She still loves it but our washing machine doesn’t!
My top advice? Maintain a ‘pick up from forest school’ capsule collection, exclusively brown and black.
Over six months, I’ve learned the diverse levels of ‘forest school.’ Some nurseries and primary schools incorporate elements, others allocate one day a week outdoors, and then there are those fully immersed, with a pop-up tent as the sole ‘indoor option’—Rae attends the latter.
When we went for the first settling session I genuinely wanted to quit everything & train to become a ‘forest nursery educator’, I honestly didn’t want to leave after our 2 hour taster! I couldn’t believe how little there was in the space but how much the children were doing with it. Making a hair dressers out of sticks & toilet roll tubes, making obstacle courses with logs & painting with mashed up berries. The teachers & the children were so calm, happy & it just felt like I’d found a mini haven in the chaos of London.
As a first time mumma, I’ve got nothing to compare it to but from what I’ve witnessed, Rae has learnt an unbelievable amount from the time she’s been in the forest. I wouldn’t describe her as fearless but I would definitely say she is totally unfazed by weather as she’s out in every single condition. On the weekends she wears cute dresses, on the weekdays she’s covered in mud in her thermals, welly boots & waterproofs.
There’s so much pressure on us all as parents to do the ‘right thing’ for our children & for some this may absolutely feel right but I totally appreciate sending your children off into the middle of a woods in the snow whilst you get back into your cosy heated seated car may feel totally wrong. It can be seen as resilience training, it can also be seen as unfair but ultimately I believe it’s where every 2-4 year old should be learning, outdoors in the fresh air, totally free to do what they want to be doing.
https://www.forestschools.com/
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