Little Acorns

Little Acorns is our Forest School offering for children aged 1-6 to attend along with their parent or carer, for a two hour session every week. We follow Devon term dates.

9:30-11:30 - Friday Mornings

OR

12.30-2.30 Friday Afternoons

This group is £9 per child per week, paid at the beginning of each month via direct debit. We charge for siblings that are mobile, sibling babes in arms are free.

Ethos

At Children of the Forest our ethos and pedagogy are hugely important parts of our Forest School provision. We believe in compassionate, child-led learning and see our roles as long-term mentors as opposed to deliverers of a curriculum. As part of that learning we aim to follow and plan around the children’s needs and interests.

“I’m so glad you guys are so close to where we live. I wish they didn’t have to go to school and could just carry on coming here with you two.”

We ask that all our participants, children and parents, follow three simple principles: To look after themselves; To look after each other; To look after the Forest.

We believe in ‘meeting people where they are’, which means that we strive to be a setting for those who love getting knee deep in the mud and for those who shiver at the sight of an earthworm. Our sessions don’t have any forced activities, so that we can join you in a ‘nature connection’ journey whatever stage you’re starting at.

“Coming to Forest School was more about me. I knew the kids would be fine but I’m so glad that I’ve been coming. I held a worm and cut firewood with an axe today, it’s amazing when you think that I didn’t want to get my shoes muddy when I first came here!”

We have discussed our educational philosophies at length in our podcast “The Forest School Podcast” and now regularly give talks and training to teachers and educators about facilitating child-led outdoor learning.

We recognise the role we need to play in order to balance and create diverse role models in the outdoor community, we use profits from our sessions to subsidise participants in our forest school sessions as well as our CPD training and Forest School Leader courses.

if you would like to enquire about a subsidised space for one of our groups, please follow the link below.

How do I sign up now?

Simply click on the button above. We currently have spaces in our afternoon group, whilst our Friday morning group has a significant waiting list. When your email is top of the waiting list, the Bookwhen system will automatically email you a link, which only you can use, to sign up on Bookwhen. The ticket on Bookwhen is free but it will link you to a ‘GoCardless’ page which is how will collect our direct debits and will be needed to complete your sign-up. After 12 hours the system will move on and, while your link will still be valid, it will also send an email to the next person on the list, so make sure your junk settings are letting emails from Bookwhen through. :)

Can I sign up with more than one child?

Some people have been waiting since before the first lockdown and who HASN’T had a baby during that time? Wasn’t it mandatory like masks??If you’d like to sign up more than one child, simply sign up with the first child on Bookwhen and drop us an email so we can manually set up the other children with you.

I’m on the waiting list - How long will I need to wait?

Because we want to prioritise community and long term relationship building, we make sure that once people are a part of our groups, they aren’t at risk of losing their space simply because they didn’t sign up for the next block or term in time. Our rolling direct debit system means people can stay at our group for as long as they want to, which is often years at a time! So, because we don’t have set times like half terms or school holidays where bookings get reset, we can’t be sure when a new space will become available.

Attendance

We hope that you’ll come along to as many of the weekly sessions as possible, so that you get to know each other, form friendships and grow as a community.

Coming as much as possible not only helps children form relationships gently but also helps us deliver one of the key principles of Forest School learning: Child-led planning.
Because our leaders all make and share observations each week, which then inform what we plan for the following week, we ask for as much notice as possible if you aren’t able to make a session.

Our large waiting list also means that children who miss multiple consecutive sessions without valid reason (principally illness) could forfeit their place in the group.

LEWIS AMES (DIRECTOR)

• Qualified Primary School Teacher

• PGCE in Primary Education

• BA Hons Music

• Level 3 Forest School Leader

• Paediatric First Aid

• Forest School First Aid

• Child Protection & Safeguarding Training

• Prevent Duty Trained

GEMMA SOUTHERDEN (DIRECTOR)

• Qualified Teacher (9 years experience)

• MA in Teaching

• Diploma in Drama

• Paediatric First Aid

• Forest School First Aid

• Child Protection & Safeguarding Training

WHAT WILL MY CHILD NEED TO BRING / WEAR?

Children should come with a drink and a few snacks for the session. Cooking healthy snacks on the campfire is a regular activity. Clean drinking water is always available and children are provided with warm drinks in cold weather.

As well as a snacks and a drink, children will need to wear suitable outdoor clothing. This includes wellies, full waterproofs, and thermal layers, hats and gloves in cold weather; sun hats in warm weather. They will also need to bring spare clothes - getting wet and muddy is extremely likely! Our site is on a hill and colder than your average park, so lots of layers, thermals and hats, gloves etc is a must in winter.

WEATHER

Forest school is all about play outdoors in all weathers. It is often said that there is no such thing as bad weather: just bad clothing! We have a huge parachute over our main camp to keep off the rain, as well as other shelters and any that the children choose to build!

However, there are certain weather conditions that will affect the running of the Forest School, which may mean we need to cancel sessions. Please see our Weather Policy here for more details.