Learning in nature with the Forest School Play Project

Outdoor play has many positive benefits young children’s development. A recent Wildlife Trust study with primary school children showed increased personal well-being, health and confidence after children had spent time connecting with nature. As a result, the Wildlife Trust recommend that all schools implement a ‘nature hour’ within each school day.

Thanks to our Forest School Play Project delivered by Get Out More CIC, we are implementing natural play in nurseries and family life across our area of Bradford. Parents and early years staff are already seeing the benefits of natural play and several have started training to become Forest Play practitioners so they can share the wonders of nature with small children as far and wide as possible.

In this blog post, we hear from Jenn Williamson and Tansy Kerenza, who have both just completed Level Three Forest School Practitioner Training. Jen is a Nursery School Teacher working at Bowling Park Primary School and Tansy is a local mum of three.

Jenn’s Story

I was really pleased when our nursery decided to take part in the Forest School Play project. A lot of our children don’t have gardens and we only have one tree on the school grounds, so this was a great opportunity for our nursery children to discover nature.

In the first week, we were taken to Bowling Park to explore the natural environment and the children stayed very close to the adults as they were so used to being directed. The Forest School sessions are very open and free and the children are encouraged to choose how they want to play, with the leaders facilitating.

“It was a joy to watch the children become more confident each week.”

As the weeks passed, it was a joy to watch the children run off and enjoy their surroundings, become more confident, use their imaginations, learn names of flowers and leaves and create artwork with anything that they could find on the ground.

The project works with a small group of children at a time, so you get the chance to really get to know their individual little characters and watch how they grow in confidence as the weeks progressed. We noticed that their speech improved as they had experiences to talk about and more ideas for play. They were amazed when they saw squirrels for the first time and when we found frog spawn in a puddle, the children were absolutely mesmerised by it.

“The sessions were a real eye-opener for the parents too.”

Parents were also invited to come along to some of the sessions and I think it was a real eye-opener for them. They were able to use natural things such as pebbles, twigs and leaves to have fun and play with – they didn’t need to buy or use play equipment.

There was one day when all the children had a small cuddly toy each and they built little houses for the toys with natural things that they found in the park. They then told stories about their little houses and built things like ladders and steps out of stones, acorns and twigs – the children absolutely loved it.

“I am looking forward to bringing the Forest School experience to more children.”

I enjoyed these sessions so much that I decided to do the Forest School Practitioner training. Now that I have completed the training, I am really looking forward to bringing this experience to more children as it is such a powerful way to help them develop. Access to nature is so important not only for their imaginations, but to enable them to take risks to make them more confident and braver.

Tansy’s Story

Before I had children, I used to work at a school and they did a Forest School there. I really enjoyed being outside and taking part in the sessions and always wanted to do the training. So when the Forest School was trialing at my son’s nursery and they were running Level One training, I jumped at the chance. I loved it so much that I continued to do the more advanced Level Three training which means once I am qualified as a Forest School Practitioner and I can independently run the sessions.

“The training has positively impacted on my own parenting.”

The training was really interesting, and I found the ‘theories of play’ section fascinating, in fact this has impacted on my own parenting and has allowed me to understand the difference between the ‘product’ and the ‘process’. For example, I had asked my children what they would like me to learn and they said that they would love for me to be able to put up a tree swing. I learned how to do this and when we were next in the park, I showed the children how to make one.

They actually loved the process of throwing the stone over the branch more than the actual production of the swing. The trainers would show us that the satisfaction of achieving something can be more valuable than the end product – they would not be learning anything if we did it all for them.

“The children were having so much fun with the unlimited amount of things to play with in the natural environment.

As part of the training I had to run six sessions in a nursery setting and in the first week the children would not leave our side as the natural environment was such an unfamiliar space for them, and they were unsure what to do with the freedom to explore. After three weeks their confidence had really grown and they were having so much fun with the unlimited amount of things to play with in the natural environment – it was such a joy to see.

We would often link stories to the outside activities and one day we played Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We took empty bowls into the woods and the children made bowls of ‘porridge’ out of mud, sticks and anything that they could find, such a simple but fabulous activity.

“As long as there’s a tree, we can put a swing up anywhere!”

I thought I was quite an ‘outdoorsy’ person until I did the course, but I have now realised that previously my confidence in taking my children out wasn’t great, especially in bad weather. I am now much more confident and better prepared, and we now go out in all weathers. We always take a rope out with us because as long as there is a tree, we can put up a swing anywhere!