Children in England are more connected to nature than at any point since Natural England started measuring it: 65% of 8 to 15 year olds now report a high connection to nature, up from 44% in 2021, according to the Children's People and Nature Survey for England: 2025 update. Yet only 35% had lessons outside other than PE every day or most days in their last week at school.
Forest school activities are what close that gap: repeated, learner-led sessions in a woodland or natural space where children build shelters, cook on a fire, use real tools, hunt for minibeasts and make art from what they find, run by a qualified leader with the same group over months rather than as a one-off trip.
Below are 30 of them, each with an age floor, a working adult ratio and a rough timing so you can get it signed off, plus what the kit costs, what your site supplies each month, and a session plan to drop any of it into.
What makes an activity a forest school activity
The difference is not the activity. It is the frequency, the leadership and the freedom a child has inside it. The Forest School Association's six principles are the sector's agreed definition, and they translate into practice like this.
| Principle | What it means on the ground |
|---|---|
| Long-term | A programme of frequent, regular sessions with the same core group, not a single trip. Planning, observation and review are part of it. |
| Nature | A woodland or natural wooded environment, so the relationship is with a real place that changes across the seasons. |
| Risk | Supported risk is the point, not a side effect. Fire, tools, height and water are offered deliberately and managed. |
| Holistic learning | The FSA's own name for the aim: resilient, confident, independent and creative learners, not a list of outcomes ticked off. |
| Leadership | Run by qualified practitioners who keep developing their practice. |
| Community | Learner-centred processes. Children choose, negotiate and lead as much of the session as they safely can. |
Four of the FSA's criteria carry hard numbers worth knowing before you plan anything. Sessions are a minimum of two hours each. The programme runs with the same core group for at least 24 consecutive weeks in one year covering two seasons, or 12 consecutive weeks in each of two years, with fortnightly provision across the academic year allowed for classes of over 15 students. The leader holds a minimum of an accredited Level 3 Forest School qualification, which our guide to starting a forest school covers in more detail. And the leader holds a 16-hour first aid qualification that includes scenario-based, face-to-face learning with an outdoor element.
On ratios the FSA is deliberately open: a high ratio of adults to learners, decided by risk assessment on the group, the site and the activity, with an additional adult on top. The statutory numbers are further down this page.
So a single leaf-printing afternoon is a good outdoor lesson, but it is not forest school. Every idea below still works either way, and our wider bank of outdoor learning activities covers the versions that need no woodland at all.
30 forest school activities
Each entry ends with a bracketed line: the youngest age we would offer it to, a working adult-to-child ratio, and roughly how long it holds attention. Those ratios are suggested working figures for a woodland site, not statutory minimums.
Shelter, structures and physical challenge
1. Den building. Teams of three or four build either a tarp-and-rope shelter or an all-natural lean-to from deadfall against a fallen trunk. Test it by getting everyone inside. One tarp and a rope coil covers a whole group. (Ages 3+, 1:8, 45 to 60 minutes.)
2. Log walking and balance trails. A line of felled logs, stumps and low branches at rising heights. Children pick their own entry point, which is what makes it work across a mixed-age group. (Ages 2+, 1:8, 20 minutes.)
3. Rope swing. Needs a checked branch, an inspected rope, a landing area cleared of stumps and a queue system. It runs best with six to eight children, so nobody stands waiting long enough to get cold. (Ages 4+, 1:6 while in use, 30 minutes.)
4. Hill roll and slide. The simplest thing on this list and the one under-threes get most from. A grassy bank, a dry day and a rule about who goes when. Wet weather turns it into a mud slide, which is better. (All ages, 1:8, 15 minutes.)
5. Woodland obstacle course. Children design the route with sticks, logs and rope markers, then adults walk and check it before anyone runs it. Timing laps folds in counting and sequencing for Key Stage 1. (Ages 5+, 1:8, 40 minutes.)
Mud, clay and messy play
6. Mud kitchen potions. Old pans, bowls, a water butt, leaves, petals and a stick to stir. Children name the recipe and tell you what it does. The highest-value, lowest-cost activity in early years. (Ages 18 months+, 1:8, open-ended.)
7. Clay faces on tree trunks. Air-dry clay pressed onto bark at child height, then given eyes, hair and teeth from seeds, moss and twigs. Leave them up and watch the weather take them apart across the term. (Ages 3+, 1:8, 30 minutes.)
8. Mud paint and mud mark making. Mix mud to three consistencies, from watery wash to thick paste, then paint onto paper, logs or an old fence panel. The mixing is the science, the painting is the reward. (Ages 2+, 1:8, 30 minutes.)
9. Alphabet and number stones. Letters and numerals scratched into a smoothed patch of mud or painted onto flat pebbles, then hidden and hunted. Outdoor phonics and counting that survives being dropped in a puddle. (Ages 4+, 1:8, 25 minutes.)
10. Puddle and stream damming. Channels, dams, bridges and stick rafts in a shallow puddle or a slow ditch. The activity most likely to need the spare socks, so tell parents before the session rather than after. (Ages 3+, 1:6 near moving water, 40 minutes.)
Nature art and craft
Everything in this group builds fine motor control and gives children something to talk about on the walk home, which is where the social learning happens.
11. Leaf and bark rubbings. Thin paper and the side of a wax crayon. Rub oak, silver birch and hazel bark on the same sheet and the differences are impossible to miss, which makes it a stealth tree identification lesson. (Ages 3+, 1:10, 25 minutes.)
12. Natural paintbrushes. Ferns, long grasses and frayed twigs bound to a stick with garden string, then used with mud or watered-down paint. Making the brush takes longer than using it, and that is fine. (Ages 4+, 1:8, 35 minutes.)
13. Land art mandalas. Concentric rings of leaves, stones, cones and petals, built as a group on a flat patch of ground. Photograph it, then leave it where it is for the next group and the weather. (Ages 3+, 1:10, 30 minutes.)
14. Journey sticks. A stick each plus a length of wool. Children tie or wedge one find on at every stop, then use the stick to retell the whole walk in order once they are back. Strong for oracy and recall. (Ages 4+, 1:8, 40 minutes.)
15. Leaf crowns and woven frames. A ring of bendy willow or hazel with leaves threaded on, or a twig square woven with wool and grass. Slow, quiet work that suits the children who find the loud activities hard. (Ages 4+, 1:8, 35 minutes.)
Minibeasts, plants and woodland science
16. Log rolling minibeast hunt. Roll the log towards you, look, then roll it back exactly as it was. That last rule is the whole activity: the log is somebody's house. Hand lenses and a pooter make it last twice as long. (Ages 2+, 1:8, 30 minutes.)
17. Bug hotel build. A pallet or crate stuffed with cut bamboo, cones, bark, straw and drilled logs. Build it in autumn, then return every few weeks to record what has moved in. (Ages 4+, 1:8, 60 minutes plus return visits.)
18. Pond dipping. Nets, white trays, hand lenses and an identification chart. It needs its own water risk assessment, a bank rope where the edge is soft, and a tighter ratio than anything else in this group. (Ages 4+, 1:4 at the water's edge, 45 minutes.)
19. Tree identification walk. Start with five common British trees and teach leaf, bark and fruit together rather than one clue at a time. Children remember bark and seeds far longer than they remember leaf shapes. (Ages 5+, 1:10, 40 minutes.)
| Tree | Leaf clue | Bark clue | Fruit or seed clue |
|---|---|---|---|
| English oak | Four to five deep rounded lobes, almost no leaf stalk | Smooth when young, then thick with creases and grooves | Acorns on long stalks, sitting in a cup |
| Ash | Three to six opposite pairs of oval leaflets, falling while still green | Pale brown to grey, fissured with age | Winged keys in late summer and autumn |
| Silver birch | Small, triangular, toothed edge | White, sheds in layers like tissue paper, black and rugged at the base | Catkins hanging in twos to fours like lambs' tails |
| Hazel | Round to oval, doubly toothed, soft and downy underneath | Smooth grey-brown, peels with age | Nuts in a short leafy husk covering three quarters of the nut |
| Holly | Glossy and spiky low down, often smooth higher up and on older trees | Smooth and thin with small brown warts | Scarlet berries, but only on female trees |
Those descriptions come from the Woodland Trust's A to Z of British trees. One caveat on ash: the Woodland Trust expects ash dieback to kill up to 80% of ash trees across the UK, so many on your site will be declining. Spotting the symptoms, dark patches on summer leaves and dark diamond-shaped lesions where branches meet the trunk, is a citizen science activity in its own right.
20. Weather station and cloud watching. A rain gauge cut from a plastic bottle, a wind sock from a bin bag and a laminated daily log. Ten minutes a session builds a term of real numbers to graph indoors. (Ages 5+, 1:10, 15 minutes per session.)
Fire, food and tools
21. Fire circle with a storyteller. The fire pit is the social centre of a forest school site. Set a rope or log boundary, teach the kneel-to-stand rule for moving near it, keep a water bucket and first aid kit within reach, and tell the story with your back to the wind. (Ages 4+, 1:6, 30 minutes.)
22. Campfire cooking. Popcorn in a lidded pan, dough twists on a peeled stick, apples baked in foil. Check allergies against your registers the day before, not at the fireside, and record what was served. (Ages 4+, 1:6, 45 minutes.)
23. Bow saw work. The classic supported-risk activity and the one that needs the tightest supervision on this page. Gloved hand behind the blade, a sawhorse, a clear no-go zone around the sawyer, and tools counted in and out. (Ages 6+, 1:1 per working pair, 30 minutes.)
24. Palm drill and hand drill. Green wood rounds drilled into beads, pendants and toggles, then strung on cord. A safer first tool than a knife, because the child controls the force and the drill has nowhere to slip. (Ages 5+, 1:4, 30 minutes.)
25. Guided foraging. Wild garlic leaves in early spring, blackberries from mid-summer, hawthorn and rowan in autumn. The Woodland Trust's responsible foraging guidelines are the rules to teach: take no more than you will eat, pick with care and avoid damaging roots, only collect where a species is abundant, and never eat anything unless you are absolutely certain of the identification. (Ages 5+, 1:6, 30 minutes.)
Quiet, story and wellbeing
26. Sit spot. Each child picks a spot, sits alone but in the leader's sight, and notices for three to five minutes. Add a minute each term. The first weeks are noisy; by half term most groups manage the silence. (Ages 4+, 1:8, 5 minutes.)
27. A handful of sounds. Five fingers up, one folded down for every distinct sound heard. Two minutes, no kit, works anywhere, and it settles a group faster than asking them to settle. (Ages 3+, 1:10, 5 minutes.)
28. Nature journalling. A cheap sketchbook and a pencil each, with the same page structure every week: date, weather, one drawing, one word. Repeating the structure is what makes change across the term visible, and it is the backbone of a forest school curriculum that builds rather than repeats. (Ages 5+, 1:10, 20 minutes.)
29. Sensory or listening walk. A fixed 200m route walked in silence, stopping at three marked points to name a smell, a texture and a sound. Walked weekly, it becomes a record of the seasons. (Ages 3+, 1:8, 25 minutes.)
30. Closing circle and thank-you round. One thing you did, one thing you noticed, one thank you to another child. This is the ritual that turns a set of activities into a session, and it costs five minutes. (All ages, 1:8, 10 minutes.)
A UK seasonal calendar for forest school activities
Plan a term around what your site can supply rather than around a classroom theme, and sessions get easier to run and cheaper to resource. The timings below follow the seasons the Woodland Trust records through Nature's Calendar.
| Months | What the site gives you | Activities that land |
|---|---|---|
| January to February | Bare branches and visible structure, frogspawn from January in the south-west, deep mud, short days | Tree ID by bark and bud (19), pond dipping (18), mud play (6 to 9), fire circle (21) |
| March to April | Frogspawn nationwide by March, wild garlic leaves, bluebells from mid-April, first leaves | Pond dipping (18), guided foraging (25), weather station (20), sensory walks (29) |
| May to June | Full canopy, long grass, minibeasts everywhere, ground drying out | Minibeast hunts (16), bug hotel (17), den building (1), land art (13) |
| July to August | Firm ground, blackberries ripe from mid-July, rowan berries, holiday club season | Campfire cooking (22), obstacle courses (5), foraging (25), water play (10) |
| September to October | Conkers and acorns on the ground, hawthorn berries, leaf colour | Leaf crowns (15), rubbings (11), journey sticks (14), green wood tool work (24) |
| November to December | Storm debris and deadfall, frost, four hours of usable light | Shelter building (1), fire circle and storytelling (21), sit spot (26), weather logging (20) |
Timings shift by a few weeks from south to north and from year to year: blackberries ripen anywhere between mid-July and early September. So rather than pin a session plan to a date, check what is happening on your site now and keep a second activity in your pocket for the week the thing you planned around has not arrived.
What it costs to kit out a group
Kit prices below come from a UK forest school supplier's published shop listings, checked at the time of writing and shown including VAT. Training fees are taken from providers' own course pages.
| Item | Typical UK price (inc VAT) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hardpoint bow saw, 60cm | £9.78 | Budget end, for adults and supervised older children |
| Pointed bow saw, 53cm | £19.79 | The common group workhorse |
| Bahco pointed bow saw, 53cm | £30.59 | Longer-lasting, better for weekly use |
| Ergonomic pointed bow saw, 53cm | £35.99 | Easier grip for smaller hands |
| Lightweight tarpaulin, 2.7 x 3.4m | £7.19 | Fine for den building, will not last a wet winter |
| Mono tarpaulin, 3 x 4m | £17.99 | Heavier duty, doubles as a base camp shelter |
| Foam sit mats | £1.79 each, or £59.99 for 35 with a bag | One per child, and the best value item on this list |
| Poly rope, 30m coil | £7.79 (6mm) to £10.79 (10mm) | 10mm for shelters, 6mm for everything else |
| Complete advanced group kit | £779.99 | Bow saws, knives, loppers, secateurs, ropes, three tarps, palm drills, hand drill, billhook, 10 sit mats |
| Level 3 Forest School Leader training | £900 to £1,260 | Most providers sit between £950 and £1,100 for the course alone |
| 16-hour outdoor first aid | £140 to £180 | Nearly always priced separately, certificates usually valid three years |
Priced up from those listings, a starter kit of two mono tarpaulins, a 6mm and a 10mm rope coil, a set of sit mats, string, a handful of hand lenses and a few buckets and bowls comes to roughly £150 to £200 on our own estimate. That is enough for about 20 of the 30 activities above, including everything in the shelter, mud, art and quiet groups. None of them needs a qualification to run. For a fuller breakdown of what to buy at each stage, see our guide to forest school resources.
The full group kit and the Level 3 qualification start paying for themselves once you are running fire and tool work weekly, taking paying bookings, or needing to call what you do Forest School in your marketing. Some providers spread the training fee over monthly instalments from around £75 a month, and a few bundle the first aid course, though most price it separately. Our guide to forest school training compares the routes, levels and what each one qualifies you to do.
Ratios, permissions and the checks before you run any of this
Ratios. In England the EYFS statutory framework for group and school-based providers sets at least one adult for every three children under two, one for every five two-year-olds, and one for every eight children aged three and over, or one for every 13 where a person with Qualified Teacher Status, Early Years Professional Status or Early Years Teacher Status is working directly with the children. Those are floors, not answers. An unfenced site, water nearby, failing light or distance from the nearest vehicle access are all reasons to staff above the minimum.
| Age band | EYFS statutory minimum | Suggested on a woodland site | Fire and tool work |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 2 | 1:3 | 1:3, never fewer than two adults | Not suitable |
| Aged 2 | 1:5 | 1:4 | Not suitable |
| Aged 3 to 4 | 1:8, or 1:13 with QTS, EYPS or EYTS | 1:6 | Fire circle only, at 1:4 or tighter |
| Aged 5 and over | No EYFS ratio, set by your own risk assessment | 1:8 | 1:6 for tools, 1:1 per pair on a bow saw |
The tighter tool figures are common practice in published UK setting handbooks rather than a rule from the FSA or from statute. Two adults minimum regardless of group size is the sensible baseline, because sooner or later one of them will need to walk a child back.
Permission and insurance. If the woodland is not on your own grounds you need the landowner's written permission, and the leader should be able to name it to any member of the public who asks. Your public liability cover also has to name the activities you actually run: fire, tools and water are often excluded as standard, so read the wording before the first session rather than after a claim.
Site and trees. Document a site survey before the first session, tag or remove unsafe trees, and re-walk the whole site after high winds before anyone else sets foot on it. Storm debris is a gift for shelter building and a hazard overhead at once.
Risk-benefit, not risk-elimination. The HSE's joint statement with the Play Safety Forum on children's play and leisure is the single most useful thing to put in front of a nervous manager. It says plainly that the goal is not to eliminate risk but to weigh up the risks and benefits, that no child will learn about risk if they are wrapped in cotton wool, and that providers should focus on controlling the real risks while securing or increasing the benefits, not on the paperwork. Pair it with the evidence in our post on the benefits of forest school and the conversation gets easier still.
Foraging and the law. Under section 13 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, intentionally uprooting any wild plant is an offence unless you are an authorised person, meaning the owner or occupier of the land or someone acting with their permission. The rarer species listed in Schedule 8 cannot be picked, uprooted or destroyed by anyone. Picking leaves, flowers and fruit above ground in small quantities is not caught by that section, which is why "pick, never pull" is the rule worth drilling into a group.
A two-hour session plan you can drop any of these into
| Time | Phase | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 10 mins | Arrival and kit check | Waterproofs on, headcount, everyone visits the toilet before you walk in |
| 10 to 20 mins | Opening circle and boundaries | The same greeting every week, walk or point out the physical boundary, restate the fire and tool rules |
| 20 to 30 mins | Warm-up game | A running or hiding game to burn off the walk-in energy before anyone holds a tool |
| 30 to 85 mins | Main activity and free choice | One adult-led offer from the 30 above, running alongside open access to the den site, mud kitchen and loose parts |
| 85 to 100 mins | Snack round the fire | Hot chocolate or dough twists, and the conversation that comes from sitting still together |
| 100 to 115 mins | Tidy and tool count | Count every tool in and out, out loud, in front of the group |
| 115 to 120 mins | Closing circle | One thing you did, one thing you noticed |
The ritual matters more than the activity inside it. Children who know the shape of a session take more risk within it, because the predictable parts free up the attention they would otherwise spend working out what happens next. That is also why the FSA sets a two-hour minimum and asks for at least 24 consecutive weeks with the same core group: below that, each session goes on re-establishing the shape instead of building on it.
What to send parents before the first session
Send this list a week ahead and repeat it in the reminder the night before. Waterproof jacket and trousers, or an all-in-one puddle suit for under-fives. Wellies, plus a spare pair of socks in the bag. Long sleeves and long trousers whatever the forecast says, because of ticks, nettles and brambles. A warm hat in winter, a sun hat in summer, gloves from October. A named water bottle. No drawstrings, no loose scarves, no wellies two sizes too big.
Add the wet-weather line every provider needs: we run in rain, we do not run in high winds or lightning, and we will let you know by 7:30am if a session is cancelled. Say how photographs will be used, and collect that agreement separately from the medical form using a proper photo consent form.
Be straight about cost, too. UK forest school places run from roughly £10 to £25 for a short session or a morning, and £25 to £50 for a full holiday club day, higher in London. If you are still working out your own pricing, our forest school business plan guide covers the revenue side. A term of weekly places is a real commitment for a family, so make the admin around it painless. Some holiday and wraparound provision is eligible for Tax-Free Childcare, and saying so upfront converts the parents who were hovering.
The activities are the easy part. What separates a forest school programme from a nice day out is the repetition, the ritual and the supervision wrapped around it: the same group, the same site, the same opening circle, week after week until children stop needing to be told what happens next.
Key takeaways
- Forest school is defined by repetition, leadership and supported risk, not by the activity. The same 30 ideas work as ordinary outdoor learning; only the programme around them makes it Forest School.
- Around 20 of these 30 activities need no qualification, no woodland and no more than £150 to £200 of kit.
- Fire, tools and water are where ratios tighten. EYFS minimums are floors, and published UK handbooks commonly run tool work at 1:6 and two-person bow saw work at 1:1.
- Plan the term around what the site supplies each month rather than a classroom theme, and check current timings instead of trusting last year's dates.
- Get landowner permission in writing, check your insurance names fire, tools and water, and re-walk the site after every storm.
- The HSE's position is risk-benefit, not risk-elimination. Quote it when a manager asks why children are holding saws.
Forest school activity FAQs
What activities do you do at forest school?
Six broad groups: shelter and physical challenge, mud and messy play, nature art and craft, minibeast and plant science, fire and tool work, and quiet or wellbeing activities. A typical session mixes one adult-led offer with open access to a den site, a mud kitchen and loose parts, so children choose most of what they do.
Do I need a woodland to run forest school activities?
Not for most of them. Around 20 of the 30 above run on a school field, along a hedge line or in a local park with permission. Only den building against trees, rope swings, tree identification and log rolling genuinely need woodland, though to call the programme Forest School under FSA principles you do need a natural wooded environment. Our after-school club activity ideas cover the hard-surface versions.
How long should a forest school session be?
The FSA criteria set a minimum of two hours per session. The programme itself runs with the same core group for at least 24 consecutive weeks in one year covering two seasons, or 12 consecutive weeks in each of two years. Shorter sessions lose most of their time to arriving, changing and settling: two hours is only about 90 minutes of usable time once the walk in and the tidy up come out.
What age can children start forest school?
From toddlers upwards. The setting stays the same and the activity changes: under-threes get the most out of hill rolling, mud kitchens and log rolling, four-year-olds can sit at a fire circle, five-year-olds can use a palm drill, and bow saw work usually starts around six. Age is a poorer guide than how reliably the group already follows a boundary rule. Our forest school activities for early years go deeper on the youngest age band.
Do you need a qualification to run forest school in the UK?
To call it Forest School under the FSA principles, yes: a minimum of an accredited Level 3 Forest School qualification plus a 16-hour first aid certificate with an outdoor element. Anyone can run outdoor learning without either. The label is what carries the requirement, so word your marketing carefully.
What is the adult to child ratio for forest school?
There is no single forest school ratio. The FSA asks for a high ratio decided by risk assessment, plus an extra adult on top. For under-fives in England the EYFS statutory minimums apply: 1:3 under two, 1:5 at two, and 1:8 at three and over. On a woodland site most providers work tighter than that, and tighter again at around 1:6 for tools and 1:1 per pair on a bow saw.
What should children wear to forest school?
Waterproof jacket and trousers or an all-in-one suit, wellies with a spare pair of socks, long sleeves and long trousers regardless of the forecast, and a hat suited to the season. Avoid drawstrings and loose scarves near fire and climbing. Cold children stop learning long before wet children do, so layers matter more than waterproofs.
How much does it cost to start a forest school?
A starter kit of tarps, rope, sit mats, string, hand lenses and containers runs to roughly £150 to £200 and covers most of the activities on this page. A complete advanced group kit with saws, knives and drills is around £780. Level 3 leader training is £900 to £1,260 depending on the provider, with outdoor first aid usually another £140 to £180 on top.
Can you run forest school in the rain?
Yes, and most UK providers do. Rain changes what the site offers rather than closing it: puddles, mud, running water and a quiet woodland. The usual cancellation triggers are high winds, which bring branches down, and lightning. Publish that policy before your first session and give parents a deadline by which you will have contacted them.