Why Forest School?
"My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status." - Sir Ken Robinson
"If you’re not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything original… I believe this passionately -- that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it, or rather we get educated out of it." - Sir Ken Robinson
Numerous studies undertaken by education professionals and scholars show us that children learn through play, learn through their mistakes, need to take risks in order to be creative and need to move in order to learn. At Forest School there are no buildings, no desks, no bells signalling break time and no prescribed learning outcomes. Instead the children lead the learning; they move, explore, discover, wonder and use their imaginations. Forest School provides children with a space to take risks, to hypothesise and test those hypotheses. It provides a place for children to communicate, cooperate, problem solve and construct. Forest School provides a safe and supportive environment wherein children are entrusted to assess risks, to use their own creativity, and to control their own learning. As a result of participating in these environments, children often demonstrate increased self-esteem and self-confidence, improved social skills, improved physical motor skills, improved motivation and concentration, and increased knowledge and understanding of the environment. As if that weren’t enough, the children also develop language and communication skills through social play. Forest School also improves both physical and family health. Many studies indicate that spending time in nature is an important component of human health and development. As for family health -- many of the children ask their parents to take them into the woodland outside of the Forest school time. We are getting families out into nature together.