Forest schools

Originally the aim of forest schools was made to increase children’s self-esteem and independence. These schools originated in Sweden in the 1950’s and was used to teach children about nature. In 1995 a team from Bridgewater College visited a group of forest schools in Denmark. After seeing how successful they were there they decided to set up the first forest school in the UK.

Forest schools in the UK started in 2001 and has now got over 6500 practitioners within the UK. In The last 10 years they have applied their methods to different surroundings such as Beach schools and Bush schools in Australia and New Zealand.

The values of forest school are inspire, aspire and transform. They try to inspire people to become ambassadors for forest schools and aspire to push their trainees and make the best of their abilities. By transform they are referring to transformational learning in which the trainees are taught.

This relates to foundation stage as forest schools in the early years settings contributes to six areas key areas of learning.

Forest schools have many benefits for children who take part in them. One benefit of forest schools is that it can improve fitness levels and health as they will spend most of the time running and playing outside which will ultimately burn calories. This is a benefit because child obesity has been a big problem for a while now so this help rid us of this problem.

Another benefit of forest schools is that it can improve children’s hand eye co-ordination this is due to children getting used to walking on uneven surfaces, using tools in the forest and also from climbing trees and making things out of the items they find in the forest. This could also improve creativity as the forest school leaders allow the children do what they want which allows them to use their imagination to it’s full extent.

Another good things about forest schools is that children’s social skills and confidence improves. This beneficial to the children as it can bring them out of their shell and allow them to make good friends. Also this can lead to less conflict as the children have the social skills to deal with problems e.g. they know how to share.

However, One problem people believe will happen is that’s children will become separated from society since they spend most of their time in the forest and also by learning skills that are now rendered useless in the 21^st century.