What is Forest School
What is Forest School?
At its heart, Forest School is all about building friendships, evoking curiosity, having fun and connecting with nature.
It is an outdoor educational approach that supports learning, development and wellbeing through regular opportunities to learn and play in nature.
Forest School is learner-led and experiential. Our learners are encouraged to follow their own interests, make choices and take appropriate risks, with trained Forest School practitioners providing support and guidance along the way.
The aim of Forest School is to create holistic opportunities for learners to develop confidence, independence, resilience, creativity and problem-solving skills.
Sessions might include exploring nature, building shelters, using tools, fire lighting, woodcraft, games and working with natural materials and lots of messy play. These activities provide opportunities for learners to experience challenges, develop practical skills and build a deeper connection with our natural world.
Forest School in Practice
There's no better way to understand Forest School than to see it in action.
Watch children explore, build and connect with the natural world in real Irish woodland, and hear from the leaders who guide them.
Key Principles of Forest School
Regular Sessions
Forest School is a long-term process of regular sessions, rather than a one-off or infrequent visits; the cycle of planning, observation, adaptation and review links each session.
Woodland Setting
Children grow in self-belief as they navigate real challenges and discover their own capabilities.
Community
Forest school uses a range of learner-centred processes to create a community for being, development, and learning.
Holistic Development
Forest School aims to promote the holistic development of all those involved, fostering resilient, confident, independent and creative learners.
Opportunity to Take Risks
Forest School offers learners the opportunity to take supported risks appropriate to the environment and to themselves.
Qualified Practitioners
Forest School is run by qualified Forest School practitioners who continuously maintain and develop their professional practice.
The Benefits of Forest School
Confidence & Self-Esteem
Children grow in self-belief as they navigate real challenges and discover their own capabilities.
Motivation to Learn
Natural curiosity drives engagement. Forest School ignites a love of learning that carries back to the classroom.
Teamwork & Empathy
Collaborative outdoor tasks build awareness of others and develop real social skills.
Language & Literacy
Rich, sensory outdoor experiences provide authentic context for language development and storytelling.
Climbing, building, balancing and moving freely develop gross and fine motor skills naturally.
Environmental Stewardship
Deep connection with the natural world builds lasting care for the environment and biodiversity.
Numeracy Skills
The outdoors offers endless opportunities to count, measure, pattern and problem-solve in context.
Wellbeing & Resilience
Time in nature reduces stress and builds the emotional resilience children need to thrive.
Forest School has been described in various ways:
A practical definition of a Forest School is:
Forest School is an opportunity for the same group of learners and leaders to spend a sustained period outdoors, once a week, in a wooded environment, ideally year round.
A regular routine is followed that is learner-led and facilitated by trained leaders. Learning is holistic and closely related to developmental stage and regular curricular requirements.
There must be a high ratio of leaders to learners, everyone must be suitably dressed and a risk/benefit approach to health and safety is followed by all.
“Forest School is an inspirational process, that offers ALL learners regular opportunities to achieve and develop confidence and self-esteem through hands-on learning experiences in a woodland or natural environment with trees. (FSA 2013)
The Forest School Association (https://forestschoolassociation.org/) has set out extended descriptions of the full principles and criteria for good practice that are very helpful.
Forest School is primarily about developing caring relationships with myself, with others and with the natural world through spending extended periods of time in nature.
It is an ethos or a way of being that values all learners as equal, unique and valuable; as competent to make decisions and as able to make choices and to initiate and to drive their own learning and development. Forest School must enable all participants to experience regular success and appropriate risk and challenge.
All six principles must be operating together in order that we can call what we are doing Forest School.
“A Forest School is an innovative educational approach to outdoor play and learning. Forest Schools has demonstrated success with children of all ages who visit the same local woodlands on a regular basis and through play, who have the opportunity to learn about the natural environment, how to handle risks and most importantly to use their own initiative to solve problems and co-operate with others. Forest School programmes run throughout the year, for about 36 weeks, going to the woods in all weathers (except for high winds). Children use full sized tools, play, learn boundaries of behaviour; both physical and social, establish and grow in confidence, self-esteem and become self-motivated.” (Sarah Blackwell, FSE)