Does anyone have any experience of these?  I think they sound wonderful and as I can’t find anything in my locality am wondering about looking into setting something up in the future (not single handedly!). 
What do you know and does anyone know of one locally (apart from the Birmingham Forest Schools initiative which sounds great but I was thinking of something along the lines of it replacing mainstream education for my wee boy.
Any advice or information woul be interesting.
Thanks

Sarah x

In the Myriad thread someone had mentioned Mind Stretchers (Sarie I think) and they are doing “Forest school”, I only looked briefly because I was more interested in the outside “toys”. 

Lovely site tho with some great ideas.

Joxy.

They sound great don’t they, the link to the nature kindergartens bit on mindstretchers is http://www.mindstretchers.co.uk/nature-kindergartens.html

Would love to have something like this around, but haven’t found anything so far.  Just the typical council or nature reserve few hours a week type playschemes.

sarie

I love the concept of Forest Schools, do you know, I was first introduced to the idea because we had to compare two pieces of writing for our English GCSE and one was a magazine article about a forest nursery, the other was about an autonomous learning based school (and I think was fiction, or was at least referring to a school which no longer existed) - I remember thinking it sounded like a brilliant idea, I wonder whether the person who set the exam that year was being ironic?

If you do manage to find anything let me know, I would have another pupil for you! Would love to get involved as well if you are setting anything up. (It is Amy by the way in case you missed my introduction )

Yes, I had a look on the Mindstretchers website when I first read the other thread.  It reminded me that I had wanted to ask anyone if they had any experience of them.

Amy, perhaps we should meet and look into the possibility of starting one locally? - Just don’t tell my husband, he’d probably kill me if I started any more projects this year (well, before our NCT Pregnancy and Baby Fair that I’m running in June anyway.)  Hope all is going well for you.

In fact, perhaps we should get a national group for English Forest schools, Scotland and Wales seem to have lots of them.  Anyone interested?!!! 

Thanks for your replies

Sarah x

Does sound a fab idea

Joxy.

A few friends and I are in the process of setting up something fairly similar in local woods here, although we are approaching it from a home-ed pov (although parts of what we’re setting up will be open to schooling families as well).  We are currently going through the process of applying for funding to develop this and two possible funders have been identified.  We’re currently firming up our ‘shopping list’ which pretty much consists of things like beanbags, string, crayons, etc.  Also looking at prices for all-weather clothing (you can get fab all-in-ones that might be handy for the younger ones to enable them to get nice and muddy without parents needing to worried about their clothes :D )

At present we run a small home-ed group from the woods and are now expanding to offer a ‘Woodland Parent & Child Group’ (so something a little different from the usual p&c groups in church halls, etc.)  We have access to the Visitors Centre so if it does happen to hail (and it has in the past) we do have somewhere to retreat to if necessary.  We have also organised Ranger-led activities for an older age group (7-12) and are now in the process of organising a ‘co-op class’ (Steiner/Waldorf-inspired) for 6-8 year olds.  We also have access to a portacabin if we wanted a further room which means that there is the possibility, in the future, of offering a further age-related activity (either for kindergarten 3-6 year olds or for 9+, depending on the interest).

I am currently doing the planning for the Parent & Child class (nature-themed circle times, etc.) and should be having a meeting tomorrow to discuss the set up for the 6-8 year olds (before having a further one with some more of the involved people on Tuesday) so we can all make sure we’re moving in pretty much the same direction re. what we will be doing and how we will organise it.

I may be able to dig out further links on Forest Schools (I have some in my 1000s of favourites somewhere) and no, at the present time I am not lending out Hermione’s watch

That sounds fab ninnynoodlenoo and really interesting.

Sarah will email you re meeting up if you like? Things are going well here, although I tried to set up a sling meet group the other day but somehow never got around to putting up any posters so nobody turned up which was a bit depressing! Annoying though as a couple of people on slingmeet seemed interested. I have decided I need a new sling because Ryan is getting too heavy for the stretchy wrap I have got.

Um back on topic anyway, I was in contact with a lady a few months ago who wanted to start up a Waldorf related school or nursery (I forget) in Leamington - I don’t know what happened with that but I could find her email address probably if you were interested.

Oh and I promise I won’t tell if you won’t - I am convinced James even thinks breastfeeding is a bit hippy and weird though he would never admit that to me!

Eve has Forest School once a fortnight at her pre-school, whatever the weather - they love it - mud slides, pond-dipping, etc - think they’ve used puppets up there too…..

I’ve recently become registered as a childminder, and when I got my training directory (book of free courses available to childcare bods) through, imagine my supprise to find a page about forest schools! Because of the large amount of pre-schools and nurseries that now use the priciples, councils are now offering courses. Mine do a level 2 which qualifies you to become an asistant and a level 3 which is a forest school leader and you can get forest school start up grants. Our council has a person use job it is to support people with setting up the schools. It’s something which I am definitly going to look into. The courses are run by a company called Archimedes training (in our area anyway) it might be worth contacting your council for advice, or to find out existing schools in your area.

I’‘ve tried looking into things like this too, but there seems to be absolutely nothing like this in the north east.  I eouldn’t mind getting together with someone to start one, but no one near me seems to be interested, and I wouldn’t have a clue how to do it by myself.  Plus, I’m useless with other people’s kids!