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More recently we have added the promotion of Freerange Childhood, in order that children might experience free play, exploration and discovery, in order to increase their contact with the natural world.

Both of these approaches involve a way of being with children that recognises their need for space and joy in order to develop imagination, creativity and as whole persons.

We invite you to take a moment …..

If you reflect on your own childhood, can you recall your favourite place to play? How did it look, how did it smell? Is it clear in your mind? Take a moment to think………..

…..Could we predict that it may well have been out of doors, away from adults, a bit wild perhaps? Fields, parks, woods, friend’s gardens, streets, open ground?

As you have talked you agree this would be true for most of you, and probably for most adults; but is not true for many children today.

Fear for children’s safety now prevents many children being allowed outside to play. In a recent survey by the Children’s Society 43 % of the adults surveyed said the age they thought children could be allowed to play out unsupervised was (wait for it) 14yrs old. 22 percent of people over 60 said 16 years old!

Think back again to being a child. Imagine your childhood indoors or only being allowed out with an adult in tow. Can you recall how you felt about adults when you were young? Of course we loved our adults, but often we thought they were boring, old, drank tea all the time, talked about uninteresting things and dragged us to educational, worthy places.

Children are disappearing off the streets at a rate that would put them at the top of the endangered list of species if they were any other member of the animal kingdom. (Tim Gill) Most children would prefer to be playing out with friends, and adults too wish that it was possible. Yet the more we do not let them, out of fear, and allow this situation to continue, the worse it becomes out there, where only the neglected and uncared for are allowed to go. Furthermore the restorative affects of the outdoors are further enhanced by natural settings, not merely the street. They need to go further than we would dare let them go.

The ‘home habitat’, the area in which children are allowed to travel alone has shrunk to one ninth of its former size in a single generation. How far away from home did you travel as a child?

Environmental education should be about how we live on the planet in all respects, and with all other living things: ecological literacy. As well as care for the planet it should include the ability to know and believe in oneself; emotional literacy, and to relate well to, and care for, other people; social competence, along with justice and peace. It also needs to include an element of seeing beyond those to develop a sense of wonder, develop creativity, imagination, relationship and reflection; spirituality.

Developing the spiritual does not mean religion, but Carson’s sense of wonder, as well as transcendence, wider meaning making, and development of identity at a deep inner level. This important function has been equated with the development of a child’s emotional and aesthetic potential, with relationship and with emotional intelligence.

‘Children need the opportunity to be allowed to carry out this process of identity construction …and nurtured in the skills to do so. If identity is constructed in relationship, then the skills of relationship are what is needed.’ (1999, p. 386)

The dimensions of good relationship are empathy, unconditional positive regard, genuineness and immediacy.

Richard Louv, in Last Child in the Woods, is one of many who are re-awakening the western world to the recognition of how great is the loss to the human spirit through estrangement from the natural world. Developmental psychology which has evolved in urban situations within nuclear families needs to take on board the infant’s natural affinity with the natural world. The disconnection with the natural world experienced by so many children and young people sets up barriers and restraints which prevent them from experiencing the sounds, smells, textures; from seeing the wonder and life reverberating in the natural world. This split between the individual and the earth has been linked to the addictive personality, to a truncation of societal maturation and fixation in an immature adolescent phase, to a society heedlessly and selfishly consuming and exploiting, stuck in separateness, otherness and limitation Our intention is to enable children to experience being inside the outdoors rather than remaining outside looking in.

Outdoor education particularly residential experiences can provide opportunities for creative play and learning; the chance for children to socialise in a safe haven. We believe that it is the ethos, atmosphere and safety of the entire experience of a residential or a day in the outdoors which contributes to the wakening of feelings and understandings of self, others and the earth. There are three main aspects to the provision of such a safe haven.

Significant threshold aspects

There are many sorts of outdoor education. At Ringsfield the concern is for the future of the planet and its children. All our many sessions are entirely lead outdoors. There are short sessions, days and residential programmes from Bear’s Picnic at foundation level through shelter building, campfires and cooking, storytelling, art, on to ecological programmes understanding how the earth works and therefore the way to live on it.

The chance to roam freely within a secure site, to jump in mud, to shout without disapprobation and glowering glances, to run through meadows and explore trees, sit with the animals, find a quiet corner and explore solitude, provides the opportunity to experience outdoor education as transformative, We call this freerange childhood. We recognise that ‘battery-reared children, driven from schools hermetically sealed from the outdoors, escorted from home computer to information technology and back, taken on tarmac holidays, will not experience spring catkins, sticky buds and other small delights and great wonders. ‘There ain’t no stars in Kilburn’ remarked one child after overcoming his fear of the immensity of the night sky.

Those of us who work in outdoor education can be seeking to experience and model a way of being which above all fosters the spirit of the child.

Fostering the Spirit of the Child

Forest Schools originated in Scandinavian kindergartens, but since 1980s has been developing within the UK. The ethos of Forest Schools is to foster a love for the natural world and the desire to conserve it, and to develop confidence and self esteem, by working within a woodland camp setting and presenting small achievable goals. Many Nursery schools now set aside a day a week for the children to spend in a woodland setting which is their camp space. There are opportunities for map making, woodland skills, fire lighting, use of tools, cooking, play, den building, furniture making, cooperation, contemplation. More recently still and more true to the Scandinavian model are Green Nurseries, which are almost totally outdoor each day. The younger children are when they develop this relationship with the earth, the better.

This has more recently been recognised as appropriate for use with all ages and Key Stages, as well as for use with disaffected and excluded young people, and those with conditions which make relationships, social skills and understanding difficult, such as Aspergers and Autistic Spectrum Disorder, offering activities within the curriculum framework for Citizenship with team building, problem solving, decision making, Science, Design Technology, environmental art. A recent addition to our work is developing work with teenagers such as this who are experiencing difficulty at home and school, and who have been referred for help.

In endeavouring to promote self esteem and confidence, areas which would come under PSHE and Social and Emotional Learning in the National Curriculum, Forest Schools training promotes emotional literacy, and rather than presenting leaders with a set of lessons for classes to work through, encourages leaders to develop their own emotional intelligence, and to come alongside the children where they are. In this way it is possible to hope that adults in Forest Schools at least will not be engaged in shaming and bullying behaviour but will be actively relating to the children and allowing them to lead the activities.

One tool used in promoting emotional literacy within Forest Schools is storytelling which is woven through the activities.

Forest Schools
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Fostering The Spirit Of The Chi
Ringsfield EcoCentre Ringsfi
The Ringsfield Hall Trust