What are the benefits of Forest School?
Welcome! In this blog we will be explaining the benefits of Forest School for children in their early years. Our main aim at Outdoor Owls is to not only get children ready for school but for life. The outdoors and forest environment provides the perfect place to achieve both outcomes. Forest School gives children a rich and imaginative environment to learn via play, allowing them to thrive and flourish.
Physical skill development and health
Forest School and spending time outdoors encourage children to get active, building life-long health habits. Their body is a dynamic learning vessel at this age, where they are getting used to and developing their full range of senses; seeing, touching, smelling, hearing and tasting, which come alive naturally in the environment.
Build fitness, strength and coordination
Children get plenty of exercise outdoors and consequentially they develop strong levels of fitness, strength and coordination. Moreover they develop great balance and coordination which further boosts their level of overall confidence in their selves and their abilities for both physical and non-physical learning. Their thirst for moving is something that will live with them for the rest of their life.
Build a strong immune system
Outdoor exposure helps children build a strong immune system which helps prevents illness and sick days. Absence rates at outdoor forest nurseries are much lower compared to indoor nurseries. Germs thrive indoors meaning bug and illness outbreaks are a greater risk. A strong nursery attendance is a great benefit for working parents, with childcare being a significant investment
Time outdoors in a forest also enables children to breathe in fresh air which supports lung development. Additionally, they get more sunlight exposure which boosts vitamin D levels which is important for bone development, sleep and mood regulation.
Social and emotional development
As per our curriculum, our outdoor nurseries focus on developing children’s “Souls” while also focusing on all of which is encompassed within the area of Early Years learning within “Personal, Social and Emotional” development. Our aim to to help children build a beautiful and strong soul that is ready for learning, by ensuring each child is capable in self-regulating their emotions. This is the single biggest factor in them being ‘school ready’ as they will be ready for learning with their emotions in check.
Improve self esteem and emotional regulation
Forest school critically builds children’s confidence as they are encouraged to take risks. They also learn to not only solve problems on their own and with others but also to have moments where they can identify the problems which need solving. These experiences develop their levels of self-esteem and also resilience.
Being outdoors and in a natural, forest environment also allows for the skill of self-regulation to develop. Surrounded by nature, children’s level of stress and anxiety is reduced which in turn promotes feelings of calmness, emotional balance and well-being.
Improve teamwork and communication skills
The space of the outdoors is also highly conducive for children to have large play opportunities, whether that’s going for long walks or supporting friends carry big branches back to camp to build dens with. These very exciting, fun learning opportunities give children the chance to have engage in plenty of activities which enhance cooperation, teamwork and communication which develop social skills.
Improve confidence and self esteem
Forest School has a profound impact on children’s confidence levels and self esteem. In the real-world environment children gain a strong sense of accomplishment for what they have acheived in their play and subsequent learning. They learn to feel capable, and avoid a fixed mindset, instead a growth mindset is established. Children learn to be excited for challenges rather than feel anxious. By taking safe steps out of their comfort zone, whether it’s climbing a tree to a new height or using a new tool, they boost their confidence.
Our teachers are on hand to provide consistent support and to praise for effort. The individual recognition of each child’s own, unique character and traits means they build their self-esteem. There are endless new opportunities in the outdoors and therefore so much scope for children to try new things.
Cognitive development
Whilst it might not seem as obvious that children can develop great cognitive development outdoors than indoors, but they can! (Don’t worry about having to imagine a typical indoor classroom to get a children ready for school, the outdoors has much, much more to offer to develop ‘school-readiness’).
Spending time outdoors as a child enhances their ability to focus. This is because time in nature is so fascinating for children that it easily improves the amount of time they spend concentrating and paying attention. This supports their cognitive powers and can help develop memory skills.
Being outdoors as a child also means greater potential for hands-on learning, particularly where children can perform experimential learning through practical experiences. So much learning at a young age happens physically and so by walking into physical surroundings allows for cognitive stimulation to develop, learning core skills of maths and science through interacting with the real-world ‘classroom’. Children are therefore exposed to real-life situations and challenges which develops their critical thinking and ability to be independent for the challenges school will bring.
Witnessing changes of the seasons and surroundings, children notice many new things each day which inspires them to ask more questions and as a result helps accelerate their vocabularly, speech and language skills.
Risk-taking and resilience
Simply by navigating the terrain, children learn to take care and take many more decisions for themselves each day. As they move and navigate the unexpected it helps them become adaptable. This also fosters a strong level of independent thinking and self-care. Children learn to dust themselves down and go again, which increases their levels of resilience and grit. In our controlled environment children are only exposed to ‘safe risks’ where the result of failure provides a useful learning outcome causing no harm, rather a progressive learning moment, in the comfort of our team’s care and supervision.
Around the forest children learn to take good judgement on what they can achieve and how they can stretch themselves. For example, in enjoying obstacle courses children learn the ability to tackle hurdles and develop bounce-back-ability. Such repetition of trying develops their skills of perseverance and also fosters a growth mindset of “I can” and not “I can’t”.
By exposing children to some risk, it means they learn to formulate a better understand of risk as a scale, which helps them build a healthy relationship to it. This means when they are older they have more lived experiences to reflect on to help them take smart decisions in ambigious and unexpected times.
Creating friendships
Another benefit to Forest School is that it encourages friendships to blossom. In our camp, children develop a strong sense of belonging and being an ‘Outdoor Owl’ becomes a group identity. Children learn and follow regular daily routines and activities, ranging from circle times, adventure walks, forest school activities, preschool learning, care and meal times and much more. This consistent and supportive environment our teachers create allows for a strong bond to form with others.
As children develop empathy for the environment this in turn supports them to be empathetic with friends. We have a rule of ‘sharing & caring’ too which supports regular thought to be kind and to turn take with shared resources and activities. This creates the foundation for positive social behaviour. In such experiences children learn to trust each other too.
Through stretching physical activities which combine academic learning, children build strong, long-lived learning experiences which provide impressive reflections. This coupled with plenty of scope for imaginative play, forest school deliver creative shared experiences.
Allows children to enjoy the outdoors safely
Through risk assessed planning and procedures, Forest School creates a safe environment for children to explore and take safe-risks. Each day our forest camps are risk-assessed, which includes assessing and planning for forecasted weather and identifying any potential hazards (mostly natural but could be man-made). Our team are well-trained and exprerienced to ensure safety ahead of fun and learning.
To ensure children are dressed properly across all weathers and seasons is key too. With a clear kit list we give to parents according to temperatures, along with providing a fully waterproof outdoor clothing set, each child can be warm and comfortable and ready for play. Waterproof and sturdy boots are crucial too.
With qualified and trained team, we also offer specific Forest School activities for children. These include: camp fires (we love to cook bread and pancakes!), bow sawing (cutting branches we have gathered to create our own wood cookies), drilling, whittling, using a billhook, mallet and frost knife, den building and tree climbing. With clear guidelines, rules and boundaries our children can partake in these activities safely and they prove to be powerful learning opportunities for them to learn to respect such rules to allow themselves to get involved. This is a key transferrable skill ahead of going to school and for life ahead. Moreover, our team deliver step-by-step learning so that children build their skills gradually, ensuring they have mastered basic safety skills before tackly more complex experiences.
It also goes without saying that we have clearly well-defined camp areas which children are familiar with and staffing ratios which give needed supervision for our age groups. Almost all of our team are first aid trained at any time (some new team members may be awaiting training) and we have procedures for team to carry necessary first aid packs in the event they are needed.
Our children will learn lots and even help teach their parents too! Meaning you can further enjoy outdoor family time.
Improve awareness and understanding of environment
Spending time in nature allow for children to gain a strong connection with nature. Children gain a strong level of environmental awareness, fostering a deep rooted connection with nature and in turn developing respect and care for the planet. We hope the experiences we give our children mean they become future custodians of the planet.
At Forest School children engage greater in learning about nature and also undertake more direct experiences of learning and understanding where food comes from. Children will get involved in projects to nuture food from seeding to picking.
In the forest, children learn to develop not only empathy for their friends and teachers but also for the living world around them. Children learn about wildife and ecosystems that we are witnessing around us. Children gain an understanding that we are in natures home and we must respect this and follow certain rules for living things we come in touch with.
Outdoor Owls Forest School Nursery
Outdoor Owls Forest School Nursery provides a safe classroom space in the great outdoors, come rain or shine. We take children from 20 months to 5 years and we have two age camps, one for 20 months - 2 years (Tawny Owls Camp) and a second camp for 3 -5 year olds (Sooty Owls Camp). We operate 51 weeks a year, Monday to Friday and offer full days from 8:00am to 5:45pm. We have the most dedicated, passionate and caring teachers eager to support your child to thrive, getting ready not just for school but for the rest of their life. There is no more important time than the early years, and so we take play seriously.
We have Forest School Nursery locations in Surrey, in Cobham (servicing surrounding places such as Weybridge, Walton-on-Thames, Esher, Stoke D’Abernon, Epsom, West Byfleet, Leatherhead and more) and in Guildford (servicing also Cranleigh, Shamley Green, Godalming, Shalford, Shere and more). Outdoor Owls also have drop off and pick up minibus Forest School Nursery Locations in South West London, in Richmond (servicing Twickenham, Isleworth, Teddington, St Margaret’s, East Sheen, Kingston and more) and in Putney (servicing Barnes, Mortlake, Roehampton, Wimbledon and more). At these sites parents drop off and pick up children at a specific location to be greeted by our team in the morning and afternoon/ evening. Children join our team aboard our ‘Classroom on Wheels’ to spend the day at our Forest site in Cobham, located at Walton Firs Activity Centre (KT11 1HB).
