What Is Forest School

The short answer

Forest school is a long term, regular, child led programme of learning in a woodland or natural space, run by a trained leader, where the same group returns to the same place over months or years.

The four words that carry the weight are long term, regular, child led and same place.

What it is not

A single trip to a wood. A themed activity day. Any outdoor lesson. A term of nature crafts.

Those are all worthwhile and none of them are forest school, and the term has been stretched to cover all of them.

Where it came from

The approach draws on Scandinavian outdoor early years traditions and was formalised in the UK from the mid 1990s. It has a leader training structure and, in the UK, a recognised set of principles.

What makes it work

Repetition in one place. A child who has visited the same fifty square metres thirty times knows it, and knowing a place is the precondition for noticing change in it.

Child led sessions. The leader sets the conditions and the safety, not the activity.

Real tools and real risk, managed. Fire, knives, climbing, with a risk benefit assessment rather than a ban.

The honest limitations

It needs a trained leader, a suitable site and a timetable that will give up a half day repeatedly. Most schools cannot meet all three, which is why most of what is called forest school is not.

It is also written for temperate woodland. If you teach in a city, a desert or the tropics, the principles transfer and the content does not.

What to do if you cannot do the real thing

Take the principles rather than the label. Same place, regular, child led, real tools, and a leader who says less. That is available to almost anyone.

Related

Outdoor Learning: A Teacher's Starting Point.