How to Decide If Forest School Is Right for Your Child
You’ve heard the term. Maybe another parent mentioned it at pickup, or you saw a social media post of muddy-faced children building something with sticks. Forest school sounds appealing in theory—who wouldn’t want their child learning outside, connected to nature, free from screens? But between the appealing idea and the actual decision to enroll your child lies a series of questions you need to answer honestly.
What Forest School Actually Is
Start by understanding what you’re actually considering. Forest school isn’t a nature-themed classroom with leaf decorations and the occasional field trip. Your child will spend most of their time outdoors—in woods, on trails, in weather you’d normally keep them inside for. The learning happens through what they touch, build, observe, and figure out.
Originating in Scandinavia, this educational approach has spread globally precisely because it challenges conventional assumptions about where and how learning happens. The forest school model operates on the principle that children develop holistically when given unstructured time in natural environments. This means:
- No traditional classroom setup: The woods, trails, or natural areas serve as the learning space
- Weather-independent schedules: Children go outside in rain, cold, and heat with appropriate gear
- Experiential learning focus: Direct interaction with the environment replaces worksheets and textbooks
- Extended outdoor time: Most programs involve 3-5 hours outside per session, multiple times per week
- Child-led exploration: Activities emerge from children’s curiosity rather than predetermined lesson plans
There are no worksheets about ecosystems. There’s the ant colony itself, and your child crouching beside it for twenty minutes, watching. When they observe ants carrying food, they’re learning about collaboration, resource management, and social structures. When they notice the colony’s location relative to trees and sun exposure, they’re developing spatial reasoning and understanding microclimates. This is how forest school teaches—through observation that leads to questions, which lead to investigation, which builds genuine understanding.
Understanding How Your Child Learns Best
This matters because it determines whether this approach aligns with how your specific child learns best. Some children need this. They’re the ones who’ve always learned more from taking apart a toy than following instructions, who come alive outside in a way they never do at a desk. They struggle to sit still during circle time but can focus intensely when building a dam in a stream. They ask “why” and “how” constantly and aren’t satisfied with simple answers—they want to test things themselves.
Other children thrive with structure, clear expectations, and the contained predictability of a traditional classroom. They like knowing what comes next. They feel secure when the day follows a pattern: circle time, then activity stations, then snack, then outdoor play. They enjoy completing tasks and seeing tangible results, like a finished art project they can take home. They may love nature but prefer it in measured doses—a park visit on weekends, not hours in the woods every day.
Neither is better. But one might be better for your child right now, at this developmental stage, with their particular temperament and needs.
The Essential Visit: What to Look For
Visit a forest school before you make any decisions, and bring your child with you. This visit is not about getting charmed by the concept or impressed by the setting. It’s about gathering specific data about whether this environment matches your child’s learning style.
During your visit, observe:
- Initial response: Does your child immediately start exploring, picking up sticks, investigating? Or do they stay close to you, uncertain about what they’re supposed to do?
- Engagement duration: When they find something interesting, how long do they stay with it? Forest school requires the ability to self-direct for extended periods.
- Response to lack of structure: When there’s no adult telling them what to do next, do they find something to explore or do they seem lost?
- Interaction with other children: Do they naturally join group activities or need significant encouragement?
- Physical comfort level: How do they react to uneven ground, getting dirty, encountering bugs, or changes in temperature?
- Recovery from frustration: When something doesn’t work (a stick breaks, a tower falls), can they try again or do they need adult intervention to move forward?
Their reaction will tell you something useful. A child who needs explicit direction to begin an activity may struggle initially in an environment where self-direction is the entire point. That doesn’t mean forest school is wrong for them—but it does mean you need to think about whether this challenge is growth or stress. Growth feels hard but exciting. Stress feels overwhelming and shutting-down.
Watch for these positive indicators:
- Curiosity that overrides initial hesitation
- Physical confidence with climbing, balancing, or navigating uneven terrain
- Natural tendency to investigate objects and materials
- Ability to play independently for 15+ minutes
- Resilience when plans change or things don’t work as expected
- Interest in how things work mechanically or naturally
Watch for these potential challenges:
- Heightened anxiety in unstructured time
- Significant sensory distress from mud, textures, or insects
- Difficulty transitioning between activities without adult guidance
- Need for frequent validation or instruction to continue an activity
- Physical fearfulness that limits exploration
- Shutting down rather than problem-solving when frustrated
Asking Educators the Right Questions
Ask the educators specific questions about how they handle the lack of traditional structure. When you hear “child-led learning,” push for examples. This phrase gets used so often in progressive education that it can become meaningless. You need concrete information about what happens day-to-day.
Questions to ask forest school educators:
- “Walk me through what a typical three-hour session looks like from arrival to departure.”
- “How do you ensure children are developing literacy and numeracy skills in this environment?”
- “Can you give me a specific example of how a child learned a academic concept here last month?”
- “How do you track individual children’s developmental progress?”
- “What do you do when a child spends an entire session doing something that looks like ‘just playing’?”
- “How do you handle a child who doesn’t want to participate in group activities?”
- “What’s your approach when a child is struggling with a skill their peers have mastered?”
- “How do you introduce new concepts versus letting children discover everything independently?”
- “What happens on days when weather is genuinely dangerous—lightning, extreme cold, high heat?”
- “How do you prepare children for eventual transition to traditional school if that’s the plan?”
How do they ensure children are actually learning and not just playing in the woods for hours? What does literacy development look like? How do they track progress?
If you get vague answers about children “naturally discovering” things, that’s a problem. Good forest school educators can articulate exactly how building a shelter teaches spatial reasoning (measuring, estimating, understanding structural stability), how observing weather patterns develops scientific thinking (hypothesis formation, pattern recognition, cause and effect), and how negotiating who gets to use the rope swing builds conflict resolution skills (turn-taking, compromise, emotional regulation, advocacy).
They should be able to show you documentation of children’s learning—photographs with annotations, developmental checklists, observation notes, portfolios of work. Even though there are no worksheets, there should be clear evidence of intentional teaching and developmental tracking.
Evaluating Sensory and Physical Considerations
Consider your child’s sensory needs. Forest school is a sensory-rich environment by design—mud, rain, uneven ground, bugs, temperature changes, the smell of decomposing leaves, the sound of wind through trees, the texture of bark and moss. For some children, this is regulatory heaven. These are the children who’ve always sought out sensory input: they jump, crash, spin, dig in sand, want to touch everything.
For others, particularly children with sensory sensitivities, outdoor environments can be overwhelming. The unpredictability of insects landing on them, the squish of mud through their boots, the scratch of twigs against their jacket—these aren’t minor annoyances but genuine distress signals for some nervous systems.
Signs your child might thrive sensorily at forest school:
- Seeks out messy play (mud, paint, sand, water)
- Enjoys physical activity and movement throughout the day
- Regulates emotions better after outdoor time
- Doesn’t mind getting dirty, wet, or scratched during play
- Recovers quickly from minor physical discomforts (cold hands, wet socks)
- Actively explores different textures and materials
Signs your child might need sensory support at forest school:
- Becomes distressed when clothing gets wet or dirty
- Avoids touching certain textures (sticky, slimy, rough)
- Has strong reactions to temperature changes
- Shows fear or distress around insects
- Needs routine and predictability to feel regulated
- Becomes overwhelmed in loud or chaotic outdoor environments
If your child falls into the second category, forest school might still work, but you need to talk with the educators about how they support children with these needs. Some programs are excellent at providing sensory accommodations—allowing children to wear gloves, creating quieter spaces within the outdoor area, building in predictable routines even within the unstructured time. Others expect children to simply adapt, which doesn’t work for children with genuine sensory processing differences.
The Practical Reality Check
Think practically about what this choice requires from you. Forest school means constant laundry, gear that actually works (cheap rain boots won’t cut it), and accepting that your child will come home muddy, possibly scratched, definitely tired.
What you’ll need to provide:
- Multiple sets of weather-appropriate outdoor clothing
- Quality waterproof boots and rain gear
- Base layers for cold weather
- Sun protection for warm weather
- Extra socks (always extra socks)
- Backpack with water and appropriate snacks
- Change of clothes that stays at school
What you’ll need to accept:
- Clothes will get ruined—stains, tears, permanent dirt
- Your child will be physically exhausted after sessions
- Scraped knees, splinters, and minor injuries are normal
- You cannot keep them clean and pristine
- Learning doesn’t produce take-home crafts to display
- Progress looks different than traditional school benchmarks
You’ll need to let go of keeping them clean and contained. If this makes you anxious, examine why. Is it about them, or about what you think proper education should look like? Is it about safety concerns that are reasonable, or about controlling their experience in ways that might limit their development?
Some parents realize through this exercise that their interest in forest school is more about their own ideals than their child’s needs. That’s useful information.
Getting Outside Perspective
Talk to your child’s current teachers if they’re already in school. Ask whether they think this child would benefit from more outdoor time, more physical learning, more self-direction. Frame it specifically: “I’m considering a program where children spend several hours outside daily with minimal structured activities. Based on what you see, do you think that would help or challenge my child?”
Teachers who know your child can often see patterns you’re too close to notice—the restlessness that emerges after thirty minutes of sitting, the way they light up during science experiments but shut down during worksheets, how they seek out leadership roles during outdoor recess but fade into the background during structured lessons.
They can also tell you whether your child’s current struggles might improve in a different setting or whether those struggles reflect developmental stage rather than environmental mismatch. A four-year-old who can’t sit still during circle time is developmentally normal. An eight-year-old who can’t focus on any task for more than two minutes might need something more than a setting change.
Timing and Developmental Readiness
Consider timing. Some children need forest school at four but would struggle with it at seven, when peer groups become more complex and they need the social structure of a traditional classroom. Others need traditional school first to build confidence before they can handle the open-ended nature of outdoor learning.
Ages 3-5: This is often the ideal forest school age. Children are naturally exploratory, haven’t yet internalized “school” as something that happens indoors at desks, and are developing gross motor skills that benefit from outdoor challenge. The lack of formal academics doesn’t create gaps because formal academics aren’t developmentally appropriate yet anyway.
Ages 6-8: Forest school can work beautifully here but requires more intentional academic integration. Children this age are typically ready for literacy and numeracy instruction. Strong forest school programs incorporate these skills naturally—measuring distances, reading trail markers, writing in nature journals, counting and sorting natural objects. Weaker programs assume these skills will emerge without direct teaching, which leaves gaps.
Ages 9+: This is challenging for forest school because peer relationships become increasingly important and complex. Many children this age want the social structure of traditional school—teams, clubs, clear social hierarchies they can navigate. They’re also ready for more abstract academic work that’s harder to accomplish purely through outdoor exploration.
There’s no universal right age. What matters is matching the model to where your child is developmentally and socially right now.
Examining Your Own Motivations
Be honest about whether you’re choosing this for your child or for your anxiety about modern childhood. Forest school can be genuinely right for a child. It can also be a way parents project their own discomfort with technology and indoor life onto their children.
Ask yourself:
- Am I drawn to forest school because my child struggles in traditional settings, or because I struggle with traditional settings?
- Is this about giving my child what they need or about making an educational choice that aligns with my values?
- Am I trying to protect them from something (screens, academics, structure) more than I’m trying to give them something?
- Would I still choose this if it meant my child was behind peers academically when transitioning to traditional school?
- Am I comfortable with this choice even if other parents don’t understand or approve?
If you find yourself thinking about forest school primarily as an escape from things you don’t like about conventional education rather than as a positive choice for how your child learns best, pause and reconsider. Education works best when it matches the child in front of you, not when it reflects your ideal of what childhood should be.
Making the Decision and Moving Forward
Finally, remember that this isn’t permanent. You can try forest school for a term or a year and reassess. Education is not a single path you must commit to from age three. You’re allowed to experiment, to notice what works and what doesn’t, and to change course.
Signs forest school is working:
- Your child talks enthusiastically about their days
- They’re developing skills (physical, social, problem-solving)
- They show increased independence and confidence
- Their curiosity is growing rather than being satisfied
- They can focus for longer periods than before
- They handle frustration and setbacks more resiliently
Signs it might not be the right fit:
- Your child seems anxious before sessions
- They’re not making friends or connecting with peers
- They seem bored rather than engaged
- You’re constantly worried about safety or academic progress
- The logistics are creating family stress
- Your child asks to go back to traditional school
The goal is finding the environment where your child feels capable and curious, not proving that you made the perfect choice from the beginning. Some children thrive immediately. Others need time to adjust. Still others give it a genuine try and it simply doesn’t match how they learn best.
The decision comes down to knowing your child and being realistic about what they need to thrive. Not what sounds appealing in theory, not what other parents are doing, not what you wish worked for them. What actually does.
If you visit and your child’s eyes light up, if educators can clearly articulate their approach, if the practical requirements feel manageable, if your child’s current teachers think it might help—those are green lights. If you’re forcing it because of ideology, if your child seems anxious rather than excited, if you cannot imagine dealing with the daily mud and laundry, if educators can’t explain how learning happens—those are red lights.
Trust what you observe. Trust what you know about your child. And trust that you can always adjust course if needed. Education is too long and childhood too varied for any single choice to be permanent or irreversible.
Further Reading: What is Forest School? – Forest School Association
