The Benefits of Forest School
Children can:
- Develop self-regulation skills.
- Cope with and learn from failure.
- Build resilience (the skill of coping with risk and failure).
- Gain a sense of achievement.
- Increase motivation and concentration.
- Improve problem solving.
- Expand their vocabulary and communication skills.
- Feel empowered and have new perspectives.
- Build positive relationships with adults and peers.
- Have overall improved wellbeing and mental health.
Forest School can increase a child’s confidence and self-esteem through exploration, problem solving, and being encouraged to learn how to assess and take appropriate risks depending on their environment. The use of learner-led outcomes means information is retained better and also generally increases curiosity and motivation to learn in general. This motivation can have a positive impact on attitude to learning in school.
Previously ‘quiet’ children have been shown to improve in their confidence and communication to work with others, and children who were initially un-cooperative learnt that sharing and working together had positive consequences – and increasingly did this (Murray & O’Brien, 2005). Learners also gain a respect for nature through many small interactions and noticing changes around them through the seasons. Providing children with an opportunity to appreciate the wider, natural world encourages a responsibility for nature conservation in later life.