"Little Forest is amazing. There is lots of fun learning and play time. Jen is kind and very good at teaching. Koan is lots of fun to play with too. There is a nice allotment. I started off playing there then my Mummy started leaving me there and I did some fun learning, writing and telling stories like about planets and other cool things. There is loads of cool things there."
- Child -
As a local home educating mum and professionally qualified Primary Teacher, I set up Little Forest in order to create a space where children can experience the freedom and joy in learning together, as well as to develop their awareness of the world around them and consciousness over the choices that they make.
The purpose of Little Forest is learning for well-being. Our three pillars of self direction, consent culture and ecological democracy create an enabling environment for well-being for all. Self directed learning supports personal well-being through the practice of autonomy and agency, consent culture supports social well-being by building mutual respect and trust in healthy relationships, ecological democracy supports ecological well-being by balancing human needs with the needs of our big Earth family.
However, on their own, learning communities like ours are not enough. What we need is a complete re-purposing of the entire education system, economy and society towards well-being for all. Other countries have done this successfully. Bhutan is famous for replacing gross domestic product (GDP) with gross domestic happiness and, more recently, Wales has created a statutory duty for well-being under the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Alternatives are possible.
There are two strands to my work with Little Forest, 1) Learning and 2) Education. Little Forest Learning is my work with children as part of our learning community. Little Forest Education is an umbrella for my work with like minded organisations, seeking to transform the education system and wider society towards well-being for all. To find out more, visit my Little Forest Education page.
I am a Trustee at Human Scale Education, a charity which advocates for putting relationships at the heart of the organisation and design of learning environments. Healthy relationships with ourselves, with our community and with the environment are the best foundations for learning and growth. To find out more, visit the Human Scale Education website.
If you are interested in Little Forest and would like to find out more, please do get in touch. I would love to talk to you about welcoming your child into our Little Forest learning community or about working together to transform the education system towards well-being for all.
Jen Nuin Smith, Founder and Facilitator at Little Forest
jen@littleforest.education
07951 177078
Koan Oak is Jen's son and he helped me to set up Little Forest learning community. As well as being my inspiration, Koan has also helped to test and develop our approach to learning at Little Forest. Koan is very good at letting me know what works and what doesn't. Koan has guided me through my own de-schooling process and he continues to show me what learning without school is like. Koan helps me to find balance and to keep my feet on the ground. We are a great team! Koan loves wolves, creating art and playing piano.
As a Home Educating mum, I love the environment that Little Forest provides and am really honoured to be part of such a brilliant facilitation team. I work with Little Forest on Tuesdays, Hornbeam Circle days. I have worked in the outdoors with children and adults for 26 years, firstly as an outdoor pursuit instructor in the UK and France and in the last 8 years as a L3 Forest School Leader. I hold a Foundation Degree in Early Childhood Studies and Education, a diploma in nutrition and a L4 in Kinesiology. I have also held two SENCO roles within mainstream settings and worked closely with children and adults with additional needs.
Alongside my work with Little Forest, I also create clothing and accessories from natural fibres, run 2 natural voice singing groups, am a qualified yoga teacher and facilitate our mobile Early Years play space ‘The Fox Den’ at festivals and events during the summer. The natural world has so much to offer in terms of education and experience. Being able to share the wonders of nature and the outdoors with the young people at Little Forest on a weekly basis within a democratic learning context is incredible. It also offers all the young people at Little Forest the opportunity to discover and implement ways they can support their environment to enable it to flourish for them and for future generations. It really is a joy to watch this learning unfold.
A little word from the woods…
Clive has lived and worked in the ancient woodland for the past twenty five years. Previous to arriving at the Haven, he spent ten years exploring the simple life of living with a horse called Jack and a dog named Shadow. The first year, which was 1990, the trio walked to Cornwall and spent most of the summer working on the first wind farm in England. After leaving Delabole and walking back, he decided to make a two wheel cart and (some months later) a bow top caravan which he lived in until being offered work at the ancient woodland that he now lives in.
After living amongst the hornbeam trees for two years, Clive came across a circle of trees and had a strong feeling to pollard them (an ancient method of cutting trees at a height that is out of the reach of grazing animals). He cut them at a height of fifteen feet (not that there are any giraffes in the woods!) and every ten years he attempted to pleach the branches in the hope that they would fuse together. He has worked on this project for the past twenty three years.
In 2019, Clive and his partner Neela went to London to join thousands of people to lobby parliament about the issues relating to the decline in the security of the children’s future. It was called ‘The Time Is Now’. Whilst there, Clive pondered upon a way that children could get their message across, as there were not many children at the event. It was a lightbulb moment! The School Woodland Theatre Project was born. The idea that schools and communities plant a circle of trees approximately 65 metres in circumference (replicating the hornbeam circle that he had created). The circle of trees (fruit/ nut trees or native) could be used as a hub or focal point for the community, but the main vision was that children would put on plays about their concerns about their future which, it is hoped, would help inspire a form of stubborn optimism in the adults watching, to help towards the much needed change all future generations need.
Clive made a plan and that was to create another theatre the same size as the hornbeam circle. A friend offered an area of land in which Clive created another theatre. After working on it for two months it was ready to be planted and this correlated with the woodland trust tree planting week. Clive invited a local primary school, St Mary’s at Pulbough and supplied 270 hornbeam trees, grown in the woodland he manages, the children planted every evening with their parents. Fuelled by stubborn optimism, Clive decided that to get the idea off the ground, he needed to buy something to advertise the idea. So he bought a 28 foot long, 7 ton horse box, which he proceeded to repair, MOT and paint. After a few months Carrie Cort from Sussex Green Living contacted Clive to ask if he and Neela would like to do the Billingshurst fete as they had done it previously. Clive sent a photo of the theatre and the lorry and Carrie said that she had been thinking of doing a road show. Long story short, look at the Sussex Green Living website to see what they get up to on the Bright New Future Roadshows.
Clive has been educating people about the woodland from his observations and experiences for years. His philosophy is one of creating ripples of interest that activate the imagination which helps allow insights, which paves the way to inspire.
He has been helping the Little Forrest team and together they are creating an environment whereby children are given an opportunity to learn through the five senses in nature’s environment, creating a fertile foundation for imagination, inspiration and innovation. It is the belief of the team that by giving children the opportunity to learn in their own unique way, that firm foundations are created, which allows a life that is confident in structure, strong in character and dynamic in creating the world that they want.
When we help plant a little forest the soil in which it is planted creates strong firm roots that holds fast in the coming storms. In the past few months the children of the Little Forest tribe put on a play in the hornbeam circle and raised £200 for their individual animal charities. At the time of writing we are working on another play.
Little ripples have the potential to create a tsunami of change.
A little woof from the woods...
My name is Sydney. I used to live in a land far away in the mountains. My ancestors would have kept the wild wolves away from the sheep. My mother told me stories about how she had dug sheep out of the deep snow and woofed the human to it. My life in the mountains was hard, I lost my family and I became very sad. One evening the metal box on wheels came and I was lifted in. The journey lasted for two days. I was only a year old when the metal box on wheels took me across a big sea. The following day we arrived in a woodland and I became very fond of the humans that live there. I had found a new pack and now my life is full of fun. I have recently met some puppies of the human world, the 'Little Forest' is the name of their pack.
I remember what it feels like to go to a new place and meet new people, so I always make sure I give new friends a really warm and gentle welcome into the Little Forest pack.
