"Forest School!” calls the leader. “Caaaamps!” chime in 119 other voices. We’re in a field. Cold, wet, muddy. It’s the middle of a Welsh summer. And there’s a hurricane coming. We’re getting ready to batten down the hatches. To make sure that everything is shipshape, pegged down and ready for the coming storm. And we go at it with a will. I see a determined 4-year-old dragging a heavy spade, helping a group of camp elders to dig a new fire pit. There are 6-year-olds holding down flapping canvas, hair and voices whipped wild by the rising wind. Groups of enthusiastic teenagers sing rousing sea ..read more

The first Forest Schools originated in Scandinavia where outdoor living is regarded as an important part of their culture. It was introduced into the UK in 1993 when a group of early years teachers visited a school in Denmark and were so inspired by this outdoor, child-centred approach that they set up their very own school in Somerset. My own personal journey into Forest School began in 2016 when my youngest daughter started primary school. I was keen to return to work in the education sector but didn’t want to return to fulltime teaching, deciding instead to set up a toddler group in my loca ..read more

As a digital education correspondent, I am around screens a lot. I am also a mum and know the challenges of balancing screen time in our family lives. I wrote The Art of Screen Time to help me and my readers get past the anxiety about children and screens. Here’s a summary of what I learned writing it: enjoy screens; not too much; mostly together. You will be more effective as a parent and have more fun as a family if you drop the guilt and embrace the good that screens have to offer, while balancing media with other priorities. When in doubt, try to use media as a means of connecting. On aver ..read more

A: I’ve been asked to help with sibling relationships many times. It’s an important topic, and one that elicits all sorts of emotions in families. We so look forward to gifting a sibling to our firstborn child – it feels like a good and natural next step in building a family – but just like parenthood itself, the new dynamic we’re creating is an unknown quantity, full of possibilities that can be both positive and negative. Perhaps the human instinct for reproduction – which allows women to mostly put away memories of the pain of childbirth in order to repeat the experience – also prevents us ..read more

As regular readers will know, I decided upon home education very early on, dabbling in organised education only very briefly at a Steiner Kindergarten. I have never had to say goodbye to my 4-year-old at the school gates, or fight the school system on my children’s behalf, or indulge in mild skulduggery to ensure a place in the best local school. From the start I elected to home educate and did so from a philosophical and pedagogical standpoint. I am aware, though, that many home educators come to their decision after first giving school a try. Some of them will have been in two minds and have ..read more

Mindfulness can be described as the ability to be present in the moment, without judgement. The practice has become increasingly popular over the years, with both science-based and spiritual techniques supporting stressed-out individuals to feel calmer and less anxious, and to reduce symptoms of low mood and depression. I spent many years of my adult life being anywhere but the present moment. When I became a mother, so much of my time was divided between the demands of my tiny human, alongside those of a household and a demanding job, and my brain only wanted to focus on the to-do list ahead ..read more

As regular readers will know, I decided upon home education very early on, dabbling in organised education only very briefly at a Steiner Kindergarten. I have never had to say goodbye to my 4-year-old at the school gates, or fight the school system on my children’s behalf, or indulge in mild skulduggery to ensure a place in the best local school. From the start I elected to home educate and did so from a philosophical and pedagogical standpoint. I am aware, though, that many home educators come to their decision after first giving school a try. Some of them will have been in two minds and have ..read more

Steiner Waldorf education is founded on the work of the Austrian philosopher and educator Rudolf Steiner, who wished to create a form of education that would help pupils achieve “clarity of thought, sensitivity of feeling and strength of will”. After listening to Steiner’s lectures to the workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Emil Molt, the director, asked him to form a school for their children, and in 1919 the first Waldorf school was founded. Today there are more than 1,000 schools and almost 2,000 kindergartens in over 65 countries, serving children from birth to 1 ..read more

As regular readers will know, I decided upon home education very early on, dabbling in organised education only very briefly at a Steiner Kindergarten. I have never had to say goodbye to my 4-year-old at the school gates, or fight the school system on my children’s behalf, or indulge in mild skulduggery to ensure a place in the best local school. From the start I elected to home educate and did so from a philosophical and pedagogical standpoint. I am aware, though, that many home educators come to their decision after first giving school a try. Some of them will have been in two minds and have ..read more

Sophie Christophy answers your questions. How can I create a consent-based environment around food and eating, when I want to also ensure that my children eat a healthy balanced diet? I worry that facilitating the children’s wants and preferences is going to mean that they won’t necessarily eat the things that they need to be healthy, and that they are too young to make informed independent choices about their diet and what their body needs. When it comes to food, there are a number of ways in which you can work towards a consent-based way of being together as a family, and away from the tradi ..read more