Parents

Forest School

Forest School creates a safe, non-judgemental nurturing environment for learners to try stuff out and take risks.

Forest School is a child-centred inspirational long-term learning process, that supports play, exploration and supported risk taking. It develops confidence and self-esteem through learner inspired, hands-on experiences in a natural setting.

The process helps and facilitates more than knowledge-gathering, it helps learners develop socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically and intellectually.

Two of our Junior School teachers are fully qualified Forest School practitioners and lead all our Junior School classes in weekly Forest School sessions. Kelvinside Academy has developed a unique partnership with the University of Glasgow that allows our Forest School sessions to take place in the beautiful woods within the University’s Garscube Campus.

Junior students in forest school

The Importance of Forest School

Forest School helps to inspire a deep and meaningful connection to the world and an understanding of how a learner fits within it.

Our approach to risk means that learners constantly expand on their abilities by solving real-world issues, building self-belief and resilience.

We believe that risk is more than just potential for physical harm, but a more holistic thing, there are risks in everything we do, and we grow by overcoming them. Forest School therefore, helps children to become, healthy, resilient, creative and independent learners.

There is lots of research out there to support the outcomes of Forest School, but we know that it isn’t just the educational outcomes and research that matter, our learners and teachers love it too!