Our Mission

To connect young children and their families to the wisdom of nature, nurture healthy children with important life skills, build community resiliency through outdoor education and inspire environmental stewardship in the next generations.

 

We strive to create safe and affirming outdoor spaces that support children’s physical, emotional and intellectual development. We fulfill our mission through:

• Nature-based early learning opportunities, with a focus on social-emotional learning, compassionate communication, creativity, imagination, and exploration.

• We bring awareness to the cycles of nature and develop outdoor skills and a life-long relationship with the more-than-human world.

• Grassroots community efforts to protect forests and advocate for healthy neighborhood green spaces, parks, trails, wildlife corridors, and habitats.

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Our founding vision is to create a community and nurturing environment where all children have access to high-quality outdoor education and develop the social, emotional, and academic skills needed to thrive in school and life. We help children and families feel a sense of security, belonging, and joy in their lives by providing quality outdoor education and a supportive community and friends.

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Principles of Forest School

We are devoted to holistic education. Holistic means ‘whole’ – and Forest School is about practitioners enabling the development of the whole person. This includes:

• Emotional development. Periods of reflection are important parts of all forest school sessions and help children to expand their emotional vocabulary and understand how they feel (emotional intelligence).

• Spiritual development. This is not necessarily religious but refers to having a sense of belonging to the wider world, being part of something bigger than yourself, and your connection to nature.

• Intellectual development. Knowledge is provided in context with situations as they arise and creates a thirst for learning.

• Social development. Consistent meetings with the same group of children means that social connection is gained through shared experiences and goals. Children are able to choose whether to work together or separately.

• Physical development. Both fine motor skills and gross motor skills are developed in the outdoor environment, as well as stamina and positive experiences in ‘bad' weather.

• Communication and language development. Working together encourages communication and develops skillful expression of thoughts and ideas, as well as the ability to listen to others. Reflection activities increase a child’s ability to understand and describe their internal state, wants, and needs.

 

Forest School practitioners aim to develop these aspects in a low-intervention manner rather than instructing the children to think or act in a certain way. The development is encouraged instead by measures such as raising interesting questions, being a role model for behavior, and allowing children to self-discover and self-regulate.