Little Cakes Forest School
What is Forest School?
Forest school in basic terms is learning in an outdoor environment. Students visit natural spaces to learn personal, social, and technical skills. It has been defined as "an inspirational process that offers children, young people and adults regular opportunities to achieve and develop confidence through hands-on learning in a woodland environment”.
This type of learning - engaging with the rich natural diversity of a woodland - in the long term, helps students to build confidence, self esteem, sensitivity, resilience, and curiosity as well as improving physically and intellectually.
Forest School has a developmental ethos shared by thousands of trained practitioners around the world, who are constantly developing their learning styles and skills to support new and imaginative learners.
Its roots reach back to the open-air culture, friluftsliv, or free air life, seen as a way of life in Scandinavia where Forest School began. It arrived in the UK in 1993 and has grown from strength to strength since then.
At Little Cakes, we are extremely lucky to have 170 acres of woodland, farmland and access to orchards just on our doorstep. This land supports a huge variety of flora and fauna.
The director of the nursery, Alpa Chauhan is forest school qualified. She completed her Forest School Leader Level 3 training in 2018.
Forest School is something Little Cakes Montessori have always practiced. The children enjoy building dens, bug hunting, nature walks, climbing, naming plants/insects and imaginative play in the woods. Weather permitting, at Little Cakes, we take the children out for fresh air everyday.
