Why We Play the Forest School Way

Year 6 lead our Nursery children in a Forest School session and demonstrated why this part of our weekly life at Harlow Green is so important.

In a formal sense this is why we do it: “The process helps and facilitates more than knowledge-gathering, it helps learners develop socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically and intellectually. It creates a safe, non-judgemental nurturing environment for learners to try stuff out and take risks. Forest School inspires a deep and meaningful connection to the world and an understanding of how a learner fits within it. Our approach to risk means that learners constantly expand on their abilities by solving real-world issues, building self-belief and resilience. We believe that risk is more than just potential for physical harm, but a more holistic thing, there are risks in everything we do, and we grow by overcoming them. Forest School therefore, helps participants to become, healthy, resilient, creative and independent learners.” The Forest School Association.

What that actually looks like: The children roamed freely in our Forest School searching for the beauty in nature, the older children wove sticky plants together to create crowns. They showed the younger children how to choose “special” things to decorate, being careful to respect the plants in the process. They explained which plants we only look at and don’t touch, which are tasty and which are definitely not! They chatted about the abundance of life, what creatures could they spot. Our environment is cultivated in parts, wild in others. This is done by our children, with specific insects in mind, so they knew just where to look to see butterflies, caterpillars, pond skaters and grubs.

They discovered a Fairy Breath tree. As we know the Fairies breathe in colour depending on their personalities and mood, and those breaths can be woven together to make bracelets of love and friendship. They made journey sticks, large hands helping small to select and wind into a memory of the experience and the environment. Some created muddy feasts, and were shown where to gather smelly plants from our edible gardens. Others looked for jewels in our ponds. Some got wet feet. Meanwhile our school hens got plenty of attention, the younger children were shown how to handle them with gentle, care.

The chat was constant, the pride from the children was tangible, the joy on their faces was immediate. The rewards, immeasurable. The Year 6’s remembered all their adventures in the Forest School and reminisced on all the weird and wonderful experiences they have had throughout their time at Harlow Green. The nursery children listened intently and got excited about what they would do next.

As for the adults, well we were surplus to requirements, these are the children who will shape our world in the future and we can see that they are now well equipped, knowing their part in developing a sense of collective responsibility to respect and protect our planet for generations to come.