Outdoor school, without giving up the academics
Parents looking for a forest school in Durham usually find one of two things: a wonderful half-day program for the under-sixes, or a full-time school two hours away. The gap in between is where we're building.
Children spend a good part of the day outside here, in every season, and the site we choose has to make that easy. A building where going out means twenty minutes of logistics is a building where it stops happening by November.
What gets taught outside
Finding your way without a phone. Reading weather before it arrives. Fire and shelter. The plants and animals that are actually here, not the ones in a textbook from somewhere else. Where food comes from before it reaches a store, which is a subject with soil in it.
Some of it is ordinary school work moved outdoors, because a measuring exercise is better with a real tree in it. Some of it only exists outdoors.
Why the mornings stay indoors
A pure forest school makes a trade most families can't afford to make: hours outside in exchange for reading and mathematics that are hoped for rather than taught. We don't think the trade is necessary.
Literacy and numeracy are taught deliberately, to a high standard, with each child on their own path. Then the day opens up. Kids who move are more engaged, they remember more, and they come home with contagious energy instead of used up.
Weather, and what to buy
We go out in it. That works when everyone is dressed for it and fails when one child isn't, so kit is on the list of what a family provides and we'll tell you exactly what to buy well before the first day.
Ontario winters are the easy part, honestly. It's the wet Novembers that sort out which schools mean it.
Join the founding families list
The Academy opens when the founding cohort is full. Families on the list get first places, help set the first year's calendar, and keep the founding rate for as long as their child is enrolled.