Babes in the Woods

Welcome to Forest School for Babies: Nurturing Growth in Nature

At our Forest School, we believe that introducing babies to the natural world lays a strong foundation for their future development. We care for babies from the age of one, creating a nurturing environment where little ones can explore and learn through nature-filled experiences. The wonders of the great outdoors play a crucial role in early development, offering boundless opportunities to engage their senses and ignite curiosity.

The Benefits of the Great Outdoors for Babies

For many years, educational theorists like Rousseau, Froebel, Montessori, and McMillan have championed the importance of learning through nature. Their teachings highlight how essential it is for children to play, experience space, engage in movement, and enjoy the rich tapestry of sensory stimulation that nature provides. At our Forest School, these principles come to life, promoting outdoor play that encourages exploration, understanding, and self-reflection.

Why Being Outside Matters

Babies are sensory motor learners, meaning they use their senses and movements to understand the world around them. From the moment they are born, their sense of touch is finely tuned, but most senses remain concentrated in certain areas, like their little lips, helping them explore the environment safely. For babies, being surrounded by nature’s sights, sounds, and smells creates a sensory-rich environment that fosters their development.

In the outdoor setting, babies engage all their senses, promoting physical growth and encouraging them to move in new ways. The diversity of the environment inspires them to reach, grasp, pull themselves up, sit, crawl, and eventually walk. The natural challenges and supports found outdoors, like sitting between logs, allow babies to take tiny steps towards using their hands for exploration, rather than balance alone.

Stimulating Brain Development

Nature does wonders for a baby's brain. The varied stimuli found outdoors push their brains to form new neural pathways. This 'wiring' helps them process the wealth of information from their surroundings, enhancing their ability to learn and grow. Outdoors, a baby's brain isn't just focused on survival but on absorbing, decoding, and storing new experiences. This kind of brain activity aids comprehensive development, from cognitive and motor skills to emotional and social growth.

Sensory Motor Learning at Forest School

We create an environment where sensory motor learning thrives. This involves giving babies the chance to explore movements that encourage the brain to understand both productive and counterproductive actions. In the forest, where movements are naturally slow and deliberate, babies can tap into the mental centres responsible for movement, fostering the flow of information between brain cells.

Being in the forest provides time and space for these slow, exploratory movements. It's a natural setting where the brain can freely make important sensory distinctions. As little ones explore, they learn to differentiate textures underfoot, listen closely to the rustle of leaves, and enjoy the varying patterns of light and shadow across the forest floor.

Join Us in the Journey of Natural Learning

Our Forest School offers a haven for babies to experience the magical benefits of the natural world. We invite parents to witness firsthand how nature supports their child’s growth, nurturing an innate love for exploration and discovery that benefits them for years to come. By joining our programme, you become part of a community that values the pivotal role of nature in education. Together, let's embrace the outdoors and its endless opportunities to guide our babies as they learn and grow.

Welcome to Our Forest School for Babies: Stimulating Senses in Nature’s Playground

We believe that nature offers the best classroom for the littlest learners. For babies, the world is a wondrous place filled with sights, sounds, smells, and textures just waiting to be explored. Engaging young children in our forest school programme can truly be a magical experience. Here, we’ll dive into how our unique natural environment can spark the senses and foster early development in babies.

Hearing – The Symphony of Nature

From the gentle whisper of the wind through the trees to the cheerful chirping of birds, the forest is an orchestra of sounds. Outside, sound moves freely without walls to contain it, creating a dynamic auditory environment. Babies, especially in their earliest months, possess an extraordinary ability to distinguish different sounds. This means that they are particularly attuned to the natural music of the outdoors. In a forest school setting, these varied and unique sounds encourage curiosity and alertness, offering babies a sensory experience far richer than traditional play settings can provide.

Vision – A Dance of Light and Colour

Light in our forest school is ever-changing and beautifully diverse. As the weather changes and the sun filters through leaves, patterns of light and shadow dance across the ground. These changes captivate young eyes and stimulate brain development as babies learn to adapt to different light levels. The forest is also a palette of subtle colours that soothe rather than overstimulate, assisting in the development of a baby’s spatial awareness and cognitive growth as they take in their surroundings.

Smell – Nature’s Fragrant Medley

In the foutside world, every day is a new aroma adventure. Babies are introduced to an array of natural scents like fresh grass, rich earth, blooming flowers, and even the unique smell that follows a rain shower, known as petrichor. These natural smells, surprising and delightful, encourage babies to crawl or reach towards their origin, sparking curiosity and physical activity. Interestingly, humans are incredibly sensitive to certain natural odours; for instance, we can detect geosmin, a component of petrichor, at concentrations far more dilute than a shark can smell blood. Imagine the wealth of olfactory information a baby is exposed to in this setting!

Touch – A Tactile Wonderland

Touch is the first sense that babies develop and it remains their primary means of exploring the world. The forest offers a rich tapestry of textures – from the roughness of tree bark to the softness of moss. As babies progress in their motor development, starting from grasping objects around three months of age, they use their mouths and hands to explore these textures. Always under careful supervision, our forest school provides an ideal backdrop for such sensory exploration – where every leaf, twig, and pebble is a new discovery.

Spatial Awareness – Learning in Harmony with Nature

Babies are naturally receptive to the flow of energy and the arrangement of their environment. In our forest school, they encounter a spectrum of natural tones that are soothing and nurturing, rather than harsh and overstimulating. This environment helps babies to develop an appreciation for subtler tones, while nature’s splashes of vibrant colour provide excitement and interest. As they interact with their surroundings, infants begin to grasp the concept of space and how objects relate to one another, supporting their early cognitive development.

The Forest School Experience for Babies

Our forest school programme provides a unique opportunity for sensory development in infants that traditional settings may not offer. In this natural playground, every moment is a learning experience. With careful supervision and a focus on safety, we encourage babies to explore, discover, and connect with the vibrant, living world around them.

We warmly invite parents to discover the magic of our forest school for their little ones, where nature itself is the teacher, and every leaf, sound, and scent is a lesson in wonder. Join us in nurturing a love for the outdoors, helping children blossom into happy, healthy learners.