Raising Wildlings

What is Forest School?

Vicci Oliver and Nicki Farrell Season 5 Episode 13

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Have you ever wondered how to foster a deeper connection between children and the natural world? On this episode of Raising Wildlings, we sit down with soon-to-be Dr. Amanda England, an expert in nature play philosophy and pedagogy, currently pursuing her PhD in Australia. Amanda unpacks the essence of Forest School in Australia, highlighting how this approach encourages free play and curiosity-driven learning in outdoor environments, emphasising the importance of play with risk and adventure . You'll discover how children can learn about sustainability, community, and indigenous connections through their interactions with nature.

Amanda's research underscores the value of regular, uninterrupted play in the same natural space, allowing children to witness and engage with seasonal changes. She passionately believes that this continuity fosters a meaningful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. We discuss the need for extended play periods and a holistic approach to education where children learn with, from, and in nature. You'll hear about the significant benefits of viewing humans as an integral part of nature, rather than as separate entities, and how this perspective can transform educational practices.

So grab your boots and join us for an insightful journey into the wild world of Forest Schooling. Stay wild!

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This Treasure Map is completely free, takes ten minutes, and is available from our Raising Wildlings website. So  dive in and s

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Speaker 1:

It's entirely likely that if you're tuning into this podcast, you already know what a forest school is and you may even attend one with your child, but do you actually know the philosophy behind forest school? Today, I'm joined by soon to be Dr Amanda England and we're going to tell you all about it. Before I start, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is recorded the Kabi Kabi and the Gubbi Gubbi people of the land on which this podcast is recorded the Kabi Kabi and the Gubbi Gubbi people. I'd like to honour their songlines and storylines and pay respects to the elders past, present and those that are emerging. I'd also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which you are listening to this episode. Welcome to Raising Wildlings, a podcast about parenting, alternative education and stepping into the wilderness, however that looks, with your family.

Speaker 2:

Each week, we'll be interviewing experts that truly inspire us to answer your parenting and education questions. We'll also be sharing stories from some incredible families that took the leap and are taking the road less travelled.

Speaker 1:

We're your hosts, vicky and Nikki from Wildlings Forest School. Pop in your headphones, settle in and join us on this next adventure. Hello and welcome to the Raising Wildlings podcast. I'm your host today, vicki Oliver, and I'm so pleased to have Amanda England joining us today. She's already been on the podcast before chatting to Nikki all about starting our Brisbane branch of Wildlings, so if you want to go back and check that out, I would highly recommend.

Speaker 1:

But today I thought we'd have Amanda come and join us because she has been spending hours and hours and hours poring through all of the literature and looking at the definitions and all of the things that have been written about forest school and I think through all of the conversations and creating course content, we realized that we haven't actually talked about the forest schooling philosophy here on the podcast and thought we'd rectify that. So, amanda, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. I can't believe it's taken us this long to realize that we haven't talked about this. So let's start by revisiting your PhD. You're currently studying. You have been doing that for the past two years. Why don't you tell us what it is that you're currently studying? What's your PhD about.

Speaker 2:

So my PhD is on nature play, philosophy and pedagogy, specifically in Australia. It's a very under-researched area in Australia. Uh, well, we know what forest school slash nature play is around the world. Um, in Australia it's such a new field as we know. You know, we're on the forefront doing it at Wildlings, um, so we don't know much about it. So that's what I'm specifically studying and so then, forest schooling.

Speaker 1:

To a lot of people like I often think, what is it if I'm a person who loves the idea of forest school just because of the name? What do you think people think forest school is?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think they think it's a school yeah, because of the word forest school. So we get a lot of phone calls oh, we'd love to come to your school. And we have to say, well, actually it's not a school like, we just run sessions and the whole point of what we do is taking kids outside to play and just let them playing in the forest, in nature and whatever nature space we can basically find. I personally love nature spaces with pricks, but it's just about letting them play and following their lead and going along with the little things they come up with.

Speaker 2:

You know, we've had kids stick out I think I spoke about in the last podcast stick a bucket on their head and go under the water and they were doing all the science behind it and realizing that there's no water in the bucket and there's only air. So it's a lot about following along with those things and then thinking, well, what's next, what else could we do next? And going along with all of the kids wants and needs. It's about doing what that could be considered quite adventurous, perhaps risky play, but it's about following along with those things and just allowing kids to engage in nature the way that they would like to engage in nature and do it in a safe way, whilst teaching them about the risks and the benefits of being in nature, teaching them about the flora and fauna around them, and through all that sort of stuff we start to embed sustainability and community connections and indigenous connections and really it's just about finding, I think finding yourself in nature.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a very holistic philosophy and I think we'll go through each of those things that you mentioned and maybe talk about them in a little bit more detail.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes, I think, depending on the type of person you're talking about, some people just love the idea of connecting with people outside and that can be the start of their journey, and then, obviously, engaging with educators and facilitators, understanding that there is a lot more behind it than just being outside.

Speaker 1:

And then I think there's like a group of people that sort of think that we just take what we learn inside and just replicate that outside, which is not what forest schooling is about too. So we become part of this like sticky situation when we're sometimes working with educators. Is that sometimes the starting point like how do we get approval to be outside? So it's like this middle ground of trying to fit a curriculum and very structured activities outside and then trying to undo this idea that we need to be doing learning to children and allowing them to experiment in the space. So there are a number of things that I guess encapsulate the philosophy and we're going to go through the principles that really underpin how we embed it in a program and I think one of the first things that we think is really important is the fact that it's regular and interrupted right. Why do you think that's so important?

Speaker 2:

well, that's basically, if you had to summarize it into one sentence definition, it's play-based and child-directed, occurring ecological spaces for regular and uninterrupted periods of time. Um, well, I think that that is so important. That regular, because if you're not regularly connecting with nature you can't form a connection with it. It's all about place-based connections and place responsive connections you can't. Place-based connections are all about forming, you know, a love for it and a passion for it and a joy for it, so that eventually you're going to want to, you're going to want to look after that for the rest of your life, um, and then you can't form those without regularly being in that space.

Speaker 2:

So we think it's really important to stay in the same space over and over again so that kids can form that connection with it and can also see the changes that are happening with it, with the seasons and the weather. They can see the erosion of the hills, they can see the grass growing, they can see the creek as it goes up and down, and then it's sometimes not there at all because we haven't had much rain, and I guess they make those connections. And then the uninterrupted part well, I think any teacher could speak to that. If you allow children an hour, they're going to find things to do within that hour. But if you allow them three hours and you just let them go for it, they're going to keep building upon what they were doing within that first hour.

Speaker 2:

You just let them go for it they're going to keep building upon what they were doing within that first hour and the minute that you interrupt them, that play is gone, and any teacher can tell you that I'm a big fan of just letting children go for as long as they need to go, because that allows them that space to just really build upon their play.

Speaker 1:

I 100% agree, and I think also even just in programs where we only run them for two hours. It's really fascinating to watch how long sometimes it takes children to sink into play as well, especially if it's not every day, so like if you've got children who are immersed in nature every day or in play-based scenarios around other children, they can find that rhythm a lot quicker. What I found, particularly with play group because it was only a two-hour session, it really took them almost an hour and a half to sink into, feeling comfortable and playing, and then they would only then really get half an hour of being in that space and we're like, oh, the session's finished, which often after a while I guess we stopped, we just kept going, and playgroup wasn't a two-hour session. It often still continues to not be a two-hour session because they are so immersed in that play and it takes them a little while to get there, which is why I think that it needs to be a certain amount of time as well, because sometimes it isn't just an instant sinking in as soon as you get down to the forest. Sometimes children do need a little bit more time to find their feet and what they want to explore. All right now.

Speaker 1:

The second part of the philosophy is that it takes place in an outdoor nature space. Now we like we've already talked about this because this comes hands in hand. In hand um, we're trying to support the relationship between humans and nature, but I think this is a Now we've already talked about this, because this comes hand in hand we're trying to support the relationship between humans and nature, but I think this is a really core part of it. It almost seems like a minor thing, like linguistic thing, but I think a lot of the time, we feel like humans are separate from nature, whereas forest schooling actually allows us to see ourselves as part of it, and I know you have thought about this a lot as well.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh. So there's some really big terminology that comes along with this in the PhD world, such as common worlds, post-humanism and new materialism. Those all kind of fit under. Common worlds is like the big umbrella term and the others fit under it, and it's all just about learning to be with nature and not just learn about nature but learn with it, from it, in it around it, like realizing that humans and nature aren't divided. So it's moving away from.

Speaker 2:

We've had this thing for a really long time where we look at children playing in nature and we just get so excited and we're like, oh, they're playing in nature and we really romanticise them just playing in nature and just being in nature, rather than actually taking it that one step further, which is this era that we're moving into now, with all of the sustainability stuff that is becoming more and more of a priority. We were moving into this era where children are starting to learn about and from and with nature. So I guess that idea of children learning from with nature would be along the lines of the weather stuff that I was talking about before. If children are out in nature all the time, they're going to notice the weather patterns, they're going to notice what's happening to the creeks, they're going to notice the tree that's just been chopped down and they're going to start thinking about those things and what you know, learning about them, rather than just sitting in a classroom and learning about the sun and the heat and what happens when water evaporates they're actually seeing water evaporate in real time.

Speaker 2:

So I guess it's, yeah, taking away that divide between humans and nature and putting them more on an equal footing and thinking about not just what we can do for nature but, I guess, what nature does for us, and that there is a oh. I guess, yeah, that they're they're equals. It's a really like hard concept to explain and I've had a lot of I'm still learning about this. I'm not finished my PhD yet, it's still something that I grapple with, but, yeah, I guess it's really about seeing us as equals and that you know, when a tree falls down, it's not just about taking away that tree. It's about thinking about what's what that tree can now be used for and realizing that animals are now going to inhabit that tree and that's now going to become a beehive or an ant farm or things like that, because nature is perfectly capable of, I guess, taking care of itself.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1:

And then you know humans tend to come in and alter things very quickly, and understanding how we balance that out and, yeah, and for me a lot of the time I keep thinking about, if children have this foundational understanding of nature and its seasons, fluctuations, it will be part of their consciousness when they're decision-making as adults, so when they're in positions of power to make decisions about how spaces are used, how communities come together, whether or not sites are bulldozed and repurposed and all of those things that are really, really important from an environmental perspective.

Speaker 1:

If they've got a core, foundational understanding and a connection with those spaces, maybe they'll think twice about the money, which is often the reason why we do these things and our long-term ability to thrive as a species and all the other species together, like you say, because we're all equal and it's not just about humans putting themselves above everything else. So that's why being in an outdoor nature space is really critical to the philosophy. Now you mentioned weather in terms of being outside and being able to adapt and understand those fluctuations, but that's also part of the philosophy in terms of being outside and being able to adapt and understand those fluctuations, but that's also part of the philosophy in terms of the fact that we go out in all weather, yep, so how do you see being out in all different weather being important?

Speaker 2:

Well, just like I said, they've got to be out in all weather to develop an appreciation for that weather. I think one of the core parts about being out in all weather is helping children develop resilience and helping them be comfortable in all different types of weather. So rain, thunderstorms, hail, sunshine, extreme heats, we're out there, it doesn't matter. We definitely have policies that mean that we're not going to be out there if it's going to hurt the child. But as far as we're concerned, children can't develop that ability to regulate themselves and get past things if we never allow them to do so. So if we never allow them to go outside and play in the rain, how are they going to know when the rain is so hard that they should not be playing outside in it? You know, I guess we just try to think about things like that, and you know things like the different clothes that they wear and how they need to put on a raincoat.

Speaker 2:

So I was in Denmark last year and it was amazing. It literally had just started pitter-pattering and half of the kids just ran straight inside and put on raincoats. There were no. I was at a forest school in Denmark, I should say there were no teachers that said anything to them about the rain. The other half played outside in the rain and they were absolutely fine with it. The teachers didn't say anything, the kids just instinctively knew what to do.

Speaker 2:

So kids can't instinctively know what to do. If we never give them the opportunity, if we tell them to go out and put on a raincoat straight away, they're never going to learn that the rain makes their skin wet and they're never going to learn that, oh, they're going to get really cold and it's not going to be a very nice feeling. You know, I was at a session about a year ago and the kids were playing in the water and they were getting absolutely soaked. And right before they did that, they said can we go in the water? And the educator said to them you can go in the water, but this is what's going to happen and remember you didn't like it last time and they're like we don't care.

Speaker 2:

So they went in the water anyway and you know that built something more inside them and maybe next time they'll realize that actually they did care. Afterwards they went and dried all their clothes and hung them up to dry. So they obviously had a plan and they knew that was going to happen. So they weren't worried about playing in the water. But the point there was that the educator didn't stop them from doing it. She just allowed them to go ahead with it so they could learn for themselves, because there's no point in us just knowing.

Speaker 1:

The kids have to know that's right and that's a huge part of our role and responsibility is not telling them what to do, but it can be as simple as a reminder of hey, last time, remember how we had a really uncomfortable time afterwards, and exactly that. Then the children can formulate a plan or change their plan and they're like oh yeah, that did make me uncomfortable and I don't want to do that again, or no, I really enjoyed myself. How do I avoid the second part, which was the discomfort that I felt? And that's a really important part of it, and I think what makes me so sort of passionate about this part of the philosophy is when I look around at how many people will cancel plans because of a little bit of rain or an overcast day or extreme heat or any of those things, when I've been forced to go out in them because of our programs and had the best time.

Speaker 1:

So we're actively missing out on opportunities to experience connection and you know those things that deeply fill our cups because that discomfort of maybe sitting in the rain or having to take a few extra steps to keep ourselves comfortable and oftentimes it's not even that bad too Like I can't believe how many people will opt out of even coming to forest school when they first start coming, because it might be slightly wet and there's other reasons why people don't want to be on the roads and stuff like that, which is fair enough, but especially when you've gone and seen like the extremes of being in the real cold, and I think that's the really fascinating part of all weather. Um, place based in Australia, for us it's more extreme heat, like how do we stay out in this extreme heat, as opposed to children playing out in the snow, which is what happens in other countries, which I find really fascinating that you know that doesn't even seem to be a consideration for them and yet, um, it's still a very heavy conversation in terms of the barriers that sometimes people have and get.

Speaker 2:

Well, we just lock ourselves in this extreme heat, right, we just lock ourselves in with air conditioning. You know, my girls and I've been down to the creek. We just got home last week from an overseas trip and we've been down at our local creek every day since we got home just to sit in the cold water, because we'd much rather do that than go and pay for, say, the pool. But there's nobody else down there and it's just. I'm like this is a great space. You could swim in it, you can play in it, it's clean, there's guppies in it, there's big fish swimming everywhere, like there's nothing wrong with this space and nobody's in it.

Speaker 1:

And we get all these odd looks whenever they see us in it and I'd like to and it's so funny because sometimes I'm like, oh, do I really want people to know about all my secret spots? But, um, ultimately that's what's going to make our society really. You know, help with mental health, help with physical health, help with, you know, connection and all of the, all of the benefits that come from being outside.

Speaker 2:

Well, Vicky, we've shared those spots, that spot that we're at, we've shared that with our followers.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and we've done this. I know there's so many people that have been like you know what One of the greatest things about coming to your program is? I've learned more about the place that we live. I didn't know this was here, and now this is going to be somewhere that will become memories for us and our family when we spend more time here, which I think is a really great thing. And, yeah, I'd love to see more people. I mean, it's frustrating. Obviously more people are outside and it becomes busier, but maybe then we'll pay more attention to how we preserve these nature spaces if more people are craving them.

Speaker 2:

I was also just thinking confidence. They build confidence, right. Our parents build confidence by being in those spaces in all weather, and the kids build confidence because they may have been scared to go down to the local creek before meeting us and coming and spending time in our spaces and going. Oh well, this isn't scary, I can do this.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, I think you're exactly right it does. It's really empowering for some people as well, particularly if it's really out of their comfort zone. So that's really important as well. One of the big things when it comes to forest school is the risky play or adventurous play opportunities. Things comes to forest school is the risky play or adventurous play opportunities. So I think that you know you can have a really fantastic program that doesn't do all of the adventurous things that you can do, but the fact that you're in nature means that there is going to be riskier things. Just, nature in itself is inherently riskier than a concrete jungle in different ways, because I think there's always risk in some way, like even a, even a playground falling off monkey, like there's risk everywhere, right, but I think that nature presents different risky experiences and we can add to those with different things that we bring as well. So, um, what kinds of things have you seen, uh, and that really excite you about allowing children to engage in more risky activities?

Speaker 2:

um, what have I seen children do? Gosh, climb, um, climb different rock faces. So at one of our favorite places down here jc sort of falls there's a massive rock face and, um, we just love letting the children climb it. Children will only go as high as they instinct, as they feel like they can. I've got this favorite thing where I just try to talk. I try to talk our parents through it, because that can be really scary, like watching your children climb. I can handle watching it because I know that they're going to be okay, but the parents can get really nervous about that. So I try to talk to them about different ways that they can talk to their child.

Speaker 2:

Tree climbing Gosh, they absolutely love tree climbing. We don't currently do that in our programs due to insurance, but children absolutely love tree climbing. So children will find affordances in any way, shape or form in nature, and what I mean by affordances is if a child sees a tree stump, they might want to jump off. It might mean just want to sit on it and pretend it's a throne. Like an affordance is a child giving, I guess, a action to something that it wasn't intended for.

Speaker 2:

Like you see, a hill that's not intended for just running up, rolling down it, climbing up it. It's a hill right, but a child has given it that a tree isn't intended for climbing, but a child has decided they're going to go and climb that tree. Um, you know, we put we've put swings in trees before in the past, things like that.

Speaker 1:

Um, oh gosh, there are so many things yeah, there's levels of risk there and and there is risk, as you say, in affordances in nature, and then there's sometimes we will give them something to take that to the next level. So we might bring in tools, we might have a campfire where we're, you know, looking at cooking and art and all of those sorts of and just connecting and storytelling around fires. So there's lots of different ways in which forest school in itself it's not about just the risky play. It's about the fact that children will then learn how to manage risk long-term as well, like they are able to actually have the skill set to be able to recognise whether something is safe or not, or whether or not they're capable of handling that activity, which is a really important part of that. I know that with there's been curriculum changes in Australia and it's quite difficult to provide those opportunities for children inside. So if you actually want children to be able to build that skill set, you actually need to let them do things that may have an outcome that is a negative one, and the idea is that they don't have that negative consequence because they're actually learning how to avoid that in the first place by implementing their own control measures, because that's what we do on a risk assessment. Right, we're looking at the control measures to reduce the risk level.

Speaker 1:

Well, children will come up with their own control measures, like you say, like they will self-handicap if they feel like they can't get up to where they're going to go. They won't go that high because they can see that the risk of them falling, hurting themselves, getting stuck, whatever it is, is a lot higher. So they won't go that high because they can see that the risk of them falling, hurting themselves, getting stuck, whatever it is, is a lot higher. So they won't go that high. They go to wherever you know it's a little bit out of their comfort zone, but they're comfortable and they can get back down or all of those sorts of things, which is really important as well. One of the other parts of the forest schooling philosophy is giving children autonomy in their play and learning Now coming. So you've worked in kindergartens and schools before, amanda. How much autonomy are children given day to day?

Speaker 2:

Children are told what to do, when to do it and how to do it. For example, my daughter is off to high school next year and she had to make a video for her high school saying you know why she was so excited to go to this high school? And she literally said you won't tell me what to do, how to do it and when to do it. So and her primary school doesn't do that whatsoever. But she knows that in a mainstream high school that's what would happen. It's the same thing in primary school. So we're not actually allowing children to make their own choices. We're making their choices for them. You know, playing outside in the raincoat. We're telling them to go and put on a raincoat and put on their gumboots. We're not allowing them to experience them for themselves so then they can learn what they need to do to make sure that things don't happen in the future.

Speaker 2:

Something that came out of my research recently was that we're not allowing children you know exactly what you're saying with the risky play before. This is quite like a extreme view, but one of the people was saying that basically, children are going to be in car crashes. They're going to not know their limits when it comes to being 18 and starting to drink and potentially drive, because we've actually never, ever let them do that in childhood. So if we're not allowing children autonomy and risk go hand in hand, right. If we're not allowing children to make their own choices, then they're going to take risks later on. Um, and letting children make their own choices is so simple like there are some easy things that you can do straight away. To embed that, I always think rolling morning teas. That's like my favorite catchphrase. If you just let children choose when they want to eat, they will eat when they're hungry. They may not actually be hungry until one o'clock in the afternoon, and that's okay, because no child will starve themselves.

Speaker 1:

They are not at all when they're three and four.

Speaker 2:

They're not thinking, they're just playing. They might need you know. You could remind them, you could say are you going to eat, like, are you ready to eat? But just leave them, they'll come to it. When they're ready they will go and eat. We see that at our sessions. They eat more. We always tell parents to bring an extra lunchbox because their kids eat more. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I guess allowing children to make their own choices and nature is the perfect place to allow children to make their own choices, because there is, per se, nothing there. We haven't set up a hairdresser corner. So in a kindergarten you've got, you know, a home corner, and home corner can, you know, be attributed towards girls because you've put hairdresser stuff in there and doll stuff in there and we definitely have boys playing in there, but in my experience, predominantly girls playing in there, whereas outside they make their own home corner, you know. They go and set up their own cubby house and a bunch of trees and they put a bunch of sticks out and everybody's playing in that home corner, because it hasn't been pre-designed by a teacher for a child to go and play in. It's been designed by children for them to play in. So they've made their complete own choice about how that's going to look and what's going to be in it and what they're going to play and how they're going to play that in there.

Speaker 2:

So I guess it's really important for children to make their own choices and I think, nature being this completely blank space, we're not bringing anything out for them. Sometimes, you know, we bring along helpful things like rope or a mud kitchen, but we're not telling them what to do with that. They're going to do it by themselves and that can be really hard for a lot of people. It can be really hard for kids, especially if they're used to being told what to do. So, just like we were talking about earlier, kids may need two hours to settle into a session because they're not used to coming to a session where they're not told what to do and how to do it.

Speaker 2:

At the start of every session, we're like right, this is what's available, you go and do it. You go and do whatever you'd like to do. You know it may be. And now the school holidays we've got, say, bows and arrows theme session. I've seen kids who have not made a bow and arrow at all and they've been spent two hours digging a trench because they wanted to dig a trench and then they played army games in that trench and they had the best time ever. Was there an outcome attributed to that? No, but were there a? There were a hundred outcomes that came out of that, but the outcome that they specifically came for they didn't get.

Speaker 2:

But they learned to play, they learned to socialize, they learned about depth, they science math, I mean, there were so many concepts in that that could not have been pre-designed by a teacher and they made all of their own choices. That was completely autonomous.

Speaker 1:

So I guess there's that link too, of we can create and design activities and opportunities to teach a concept. It doesn't mean that that activity will be absorbed by the child and they won't actually learn about it, or they could be in it in the moment, but they don't retain it. If they come to that conclusion on their own, through their play, it is more likely that they will take that concept, internalize it and learn from it on their own, as opposed to having a step-by-step lesson presented to them by a teacher. So I think that there is a little bit of a switch that needs to be made for educators to realize how powerful autonomy can be in learning. That's completely different to structured activities that we typically do because that's how we see our role. So it's a whole role shift as well for facilitators, which brings me to the last part of the philosophy, which is that it is a holistic Well, I think we've realized that, haven't we Every time?

Speaker 2:

you say something I reconnected to something that was already there. Every time you say something, I reconnected to something that was already there, that's right. Yeah, I think with. One of my biggest things is that it's a philosophy. I think that if you're doing it just as an activity, where you go out and you do forest school for an hour a week and you've done you know, quote marks forest school, that's not forest school. Forest school, just like you said, is a holistic thing that you can take through everything. It can be embedded everywhere. You don't have to be outside to do it. It's great to be outside in nature, and I advocate for kids being predominantly in nature, but it can also be something that's done inside, simply by allowing children to make their choices, having a blank space in your classroom, allowing them to take risks. There are risks that you can take inside. I mean gosh, in some places, in some kindergartens, using a pair of scissors can be deemed a risk.

Speaker 2:

Using a hot glue gun, like I always have a glue gun in my kindergarten room, the parents used to freak out. We definitely had kids who got hot glue on their fingers. They did not do it again. They learned very quickly what the outcome of not using the hot glue gun properly was.

Speaker 2:

Um, so there are definitely ways that you can actually insert risk inside and outside. But you know, allowing children to make their own choices, that autonomy, all of those things. So the forest school philosophy can be done on a whole anywhere that you are. But I definitely would advocate, you know, when we have our own child care center, the kids will be allowed to be outside as much as they want to be. But there are kids who actually don't love being outside. We still get them to come outside of this, because how can you learn to love it if you're never in it? But they will have that choice between indoor and outdoors. If they want to be indoors for some of their day, that's perfectly fine as well, because I can implement that holistic forest school philosophy no matter where we are.

Speaker 1:

And I guess, too, that's about helping children to be safe as well. When you're giving them that autonomy, you're respecting their need to stay safe, and for some children it may take them a while to feel safe outside. And, as you're saying, that is about a relationships too, about forming those relationships with children and and listening deeply listening to what their needs are in that moment, and that doesn't mean that we can't extend them. But that feeling of safety is really important for children as well, part of that holistic development well and look some kids.

Speaker 2:

You know, like you said, some kids have never been outside. I mean, we've got this whole round of covid babies coming through now, coming through preschools, that have never been outside. And you've been in these individual like inside their homes, because we got told not to go outside, goodness knows why, because you pretty much had a zero percent chance of catching it when you're outside. But we were told not to go outside, we were told to stay inside our homes and lock ourselves away. So there are kids that have never touched it and have never played in a creek and you know those.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we definitely need to be out there doing it exactly well, I really hope that people have gotten a little bit more of an idea of the fact that forest schooling and I guess that's why we kept the name and that's why we pursue this, because all of these things are so important to embed in in our programs and we believe in them in terms of allowing like all of these elements are so important in child development, which is why we resonate so much with this philosophy and from that, amanda and I are going to have a little chat in the next episode about the word forest school and the different names that have come up and some of the heated discussions around the terminology in our very next episode. So thank you, amanda, for coming and chatting all things about the forest schooling philosophy and, as always, guys, we love doing this journey with you. Stay wild. Thanks for having me.