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What an awesome movement. Most of my best memories at school as a kid were when I was outdoors.

I also still vividly remember the feeling of being forced to go back inside after lunch period at as a kid (lunch was semi open-air, and after our meals we'd always play outside). It was a huge mood killer. Imagining having classes outside in the yard, under some trees now, that'd be quite nice.


Thousands? I would like that, but on the map [0] I see only a couple in england. Where is the rest?


Not sure what the data source is for that map - but in my small part of Norfolk I know of 4 forest schools my kids could go to - plus if you click on the lower of the 2 blue dots over the map of the UK, it opens out to show you 61 schools.

Also a friend in Sheffield runs https://www.forestschools.com/ - they have a few of their own schools in the area, and then run training sessions for people that want to run their own.

Most of his training is in the UK, but it is a full time job for him and his team, so I can only assume either there are loads of forest schools opening up, or people just like doing the training and then apply the learnings to 'normal' school processes.

My kids school is a standard state school, but they all do one day a week 'forest school' from the woods that form part of the school grounds. I doubt they are on the 'forest schools' list.


Around 2000 in Germany: https://www.bvnw.de/natur-und-waldkindergaerten/deutschland

450-500 in Denmark here's a good research study including impact on ongoing educational attainments: https://nexs.ku.dk/forskning/idraet-individ-samfund/krop-lae...

About 1000 in the US: https://naturallykatey.wordpress.com/2021/01/08/list-of-fore...

Plenty in the UK, Spain and France too.

There are more projects for early years education than later, and they very typically don't have websites or much digital presence.


Well, I think a kindergarten is not the same as a school and as far as I understand the concept, it just means they are close to a forest and spend more time in it (which is something good already and I have nothing against solid houses).




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