How to stay warm in winter
If we can keep them dry and warm there’s no limit to their fun, regardless of the weather! That said you may be surprised at just how warm children can get during a busy Forest School session, so often they strip down to their bottom layer, just a t-shirt or jumper in the coldest weather and as a team we’re here to make sure they don’t get too hot as well as making sure they aren’t too cold. Factor in all of us having a different sensory perception of the world and how heat, cold, humidity, heavy clothing, synthetic or ‘itchy’ textures may make us feel and so on and you suddenly realise that there’s a lot more to keeping children safe outdoors than just making sure they don’t poke themselves with a stick. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with our recommended clothing list for Autumn and Winter at a Green Planet Forest School Session.
Is it too weathery to run the session today?
With safety underpinning everything we do at any Forest School session I thought it pertinent to write our latest blog about something which we get asked so often; Is it too windy/wet/cold/muddy/thundery/rainy/weathery to run the session today? And I think the easiest way for me to relay just how much detail we go to at Green Planet to ensure your children (and our staff) are safe is to show you our poor weather policy.
The Value of Free Play
Taking back childhood and enhancing development through unstructured play
Let me start this post with a wide open question, allow yourself a few moments to consider the answer before you read on. The question is, what are some of your fondest memories from your childhood?
Forest School Fun! – Making memories at our holiday clubs, after school clubs and lessons
Time outdoors is a key pillar in children and young people’s lives as they grow and develop and it plays an important role in their mental health and wellbeing. I’ve written a fair bit about how child development, and especially neuro-diverse child development can be accelerated by unstructured free play during time outdoors and specifically at Forest School sessions, but now it’s time to get to the really really fun stuff, what they actually get up to, the impact it has on their holistic development, and what they’ll remember most, about our Forest School sessions in school time, at after school clubs and at our holiday camps!
There’s no such thing as bad weather
Did you know that in our part of the beautiful British Isles, namely; Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire, we have on average 188 days of rain according to the Met office. That means that for just over 6 months, or approximately half of every year the Nimbostratus (Nimbostratus clouds bring continuous precipitation that can last for many hours) fill the sky and persistently precipitate (rain) upon us.
