Outdoor school, with the academics kept
Parents looking for a forest school in Durham usually find one of two things: a wonderful half-day program for the under-sixes, or a full-time school two hours away. The gap in between is where we're building.
Children spend a good part of the day outside here, in every season, and the site we choose has to make that easy. A building where going out means twenty minutes of logistics is a building where it stops happening by November.
What gets taught outside
Finding your way without a phone. Reading weather before it arrives. Fire and shelter. The plants and animals that live here, not the ones in a textbook from somewhere else. Where food comes from before it reaches a store.
Some of it is ordinary school work moved outdoors, because a measuring exercise is better with a real tree in it. Some of it only exists outdoors.
The academics
Reading, writing and mathematics are taught deliberately here, to a high standard.
Some of it happens in a classroom and some of it outdoors, depending on the lesson and the weather.
What families provide
Outdoor clothing for the season, which is the one thing a day like this needs from home. We'll send a list well before the first day so nothing has to be bought in a hurry.
Everything else is included in the fee: the teaching, the materials and the outdoor program.