Forest School

Our Forest School sessions take place at our beautiful semi-ancient woodland near Bucknell, Shropshire, neighbouring onto the Shropshire Hills AONB and its aubunadance of flora and fauna. Here, children are free to explore the natural woodland environment, enjoying the ‘serving hatch’ and mud kitchen, the scramble net, hammocks, mini-beast hunting areas, the dotted-about quiet pondering seats, den building areas, mud-slide banks, and whatever they would like to envisage the woodland into being! Each session introduces at least one new actvitity/craft and one new game, encouraging children to develop their skill set, knowledge base, natural curiosity, imagination and, ultimately, their self-confidence. We do a lot of cooking and fire skills during our sessions, asnd it is a key principle that we should role-model and display self-sufficiency, self-responsibility and healthy eating as adults.

During the sessions, plenty of opportunties are given to free-play, and trained Forest School Leaders and Assistants facilitate this learning by embracing a minimal intervention approach, while observing and facilitating the children and their ideas where we can. Some children may need more encouraging to try new things; Others may need more help to understand how to better assess risks. Ultimately, we take the child’s lead. Tools and equipment are at the children’s disposal, encouraging creativity and a sense of autonomy and ‘can-do’ attitude in children, with Forest School Leaders assisting them in their missions and giving training to enable them to carry out their ideas independently. Children often devise plans together, and here friendships flourish and a mini-community emerges, with older children often taking the younger and/or quieter ones ‘under their wings’. This is a blissful point for us Forest School Leaders, where we see something beautiful emerge in children: Pure human kindness.

Through the repeat sessions, we see dramatic changes in children through this practice of the holistic development approach: Increased self-belief, improved levels of self-confidence and self-esteem, a sense of belonging, a developed sense of self-responsibility and self-sufficiency, a higher connection to the natural world, and an overall improved wellbeing through being immersed in nature and feeling physically exhausted at the end of the day!

We offer regular Forest School sessions in the form of:

• ‘Wild Learners’ Home Education Sessions (6-12 years old) (Find out more information)

• Holiday Club Sessions (May-Oct) (Find out more information)

• Forest School Sessions for Schools

We also offer Forest School themed one-off sessions in the form of:

• Birthday Parties

• Family Experience Sessions

If you would like to discuss these options further, please get in touch via our Contact Form.

Similarly, if you work for a school and would like to discuss the possibility of delivering Forest School sessions to your school, please fill in our Contact Form and we can discuss this further.

Please note, all of our sessions are delivered by qualified Forest School Leaders and Assistants, with the necessary legal requirements: Emergency Outdoor First Aid trained, DBS certificates, Safeguarding Training, Food Safety & Hygeine Training, and Public Liability Insurance. All equipment and activities are risk assessed with thorough daily checks carried out to ensure the site, equipment, tools and the environment are safe for us to use. We are able to deliver Forest School sessions for groups up to 12 people with two practitioners (our preferred maximum capacity), and are able to deliver specialised 2:1 ratios for children or young people who would benefit from such individualised attention.