“I hear I forget,
I see I remember, I do I understand.” Confucius
A big area of learning outdoors within schools is forest
schooling. Forest schooling involves practitioners who are Forest School
qualified to take groups of children usually between 3 and 10 to access the
outdoors on a regular basis, such as visiting their local woodland area once a
week.
The aim is to allow children to feel relaxed within their local
facilities. Activities are carried out in the environment, and are lead by the
child. This enables the child to feel important and in charge of their own
discovery. Forest school empowers children to learn through their experience of
trial and error, which allows the environment to do the teaching. By being in the outdoors all areas of
intelligence are able to be used and developed such as; visual auditory, and
kinesthetic. By using all areas the children are able to learn to their highest
standard. Using forest schools as a way of learning is very beneficial to the
child, as the children can build and strengthen many different skills such as;
independence, social skills, creativity, resilience, and self-esteem. This as a
whole makes the child more of a confident learner. One important benefit that
stands out from others is that children within forest schools have the
opportunity to attain high levels of knowledge and skills regardless of their
academic ability. Being aware that “Children learn and develop in different
ways” Isaacs(2010, ) it is important that children get to shine and have the
opportunity to develop in their preferred style.
A very well written article explaining all about outdoor
learning and forest schools including: the role, the importance of the
outdoors, the benefits, and how it is carried out.
http://www.tandfonline.com.v-ezproxy.smu.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1080/03004270802291798
From the below video it is made clear the benefits of the
forest schools. We can see the child grow with confidence and develop their
skills. Many things are being explored that would be near impossible to do
within the classroom. Being outside the children are able to see, hear, touch,
and smell. By experimenting in the outdoors the children get a real life
experience and actual results of their consequences Therefore the children are
learning first handed and are able to see the actual product and what the
purpose is. The children have a complete freedom within forest schools allowing
them to do what they want, and to be in charge of their own learning through
experimenting.
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