Come say Hello!

We have a lot of visitors at Forest School. 

Plenty are of the feathered and furred variety, and the children love meeting them!

But, we also have lots of people coming and going. This week (and next) we have a group of students on their Level 3 Forest School Leader Course. We team up with Forest School Learning Initiative a couple of times a year, we provide the space and the support tutoring, and FSLI provides almost twenty years of training experience on 3 continents, in several countries!

It's great having students around as it's impossible NOT to view everything we do through their eyes as new and different! Which is always a great perspective!

We also have some much smaller visitors in the form of children from the Nursery next door! Again, watching them need very few activities, and to just revel in the freedom of exploring for themselves is a timely reminder as to why we actually do this! 

Last weekend we did a little visiting of our own and took the opportunity to meet up with some of our past FSL students at an amazing Forest School near Ashford, Led by the Wild. It was a chance to hug, catch up, laugh, chat, share ideas, and seek solutions to issues we may have on our own sites. 

This week we started to plan our next 'Alumni' meeting, to be held here at Chartham.

Not everybody who wants to visit had trained on our site. Many people are curious because of our Facebook, TikTok, and X (twitter) posts. So this term we're throwing open Thursday afternoons for visitors who want a guided tour and a chat about all things Forest School!

On top of that we hope to go to extremes next term and invite families to a Toddler Stay & Play with parents/carers and mostly siblings of our pupils. If popular we may throw it open to the wider community, but will have to see what kind of interest there is in spaces! 

Meanwhile at the other end of the age spectrum we'd like to run a couple of 'taster' sessions for parents and carers to come and enjoy! We know they hear endless Forest School stories from their children, so it would be nice to see how much they enjoy a session...! 

Perhaps a mix of class session and training session would be fun?

Finally, before we forget, we are hosting a Forest School First Aid Course next month. FSLI have a perfect hybrid of Paediatric and outdoor first aid knowledge to compliment practitioners. Some of our staff are due to renew their certificates, and a whole host of other professionals will be joining us for two days of training.

So, even if we discount the whole of Reception, one Year 1 class, one Year 2 class, one Year 3, one Year 4, one Year 5, AND one Year 6 class, we still have plenty to keep us busy! 

If you'd like to come and visit one Thursday afternoon this term, please go to our website and fill in the contact form, or find us.on Facebook or X!

We'd love to say hello!

P.S. The next training course will be in Autumn!

Location: Canterbury, UK

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