Forest Schools have been working in Carmarthenshire during the last five years, enabling children to play and learn in a woodland setting. The woodland creates a very special learning environment and one which many people respond to very positively.

One of the main aims of Forest School is to develop self confidence and self esteem and this is achieved through games, arts activities, story telling, and the learning of woodland skills. Children usually spend a morning or a day at Forest School, ideally every week or fortnight and it becomes a regular part of their learning – it is not a one–off event. All Forest School leaders carry out specific training and teacher/pupil ratios at sessions are higher than in school, partly because of the nature of the activities offered – children may be learning to use small tools.

As well as their commitment to working with children, Forest School leaders want to ensure that their use of each Forest School site is sustainable. To achieve this Environment Wales and the Carmarthenshire LBAP partnership jointly funded training for Forest School leaders to help them look at the impact of Forest School activities on sites, and to raise awareness of woodland biodiversity, as well as of the historic environment.

Over the last year this one–day course has been run at five venues across Wales, including Marros Wood in Carmarthenshire and over 45 people have attended the training. During the day trainees look at the history of the site and its features – its habitats and species, its archaeology, and at the impact that different activities may have on these. We discuss how to reduce these impacts and we also look at techniques for monitoring changes within sites – fixed–point photography, quadrats and transects. Feedback has been very positive and over the next 12 months Forest School will be running further training to assist in the development of simple site management plans. These plans will set out the woodland and biodiversity management that each site requires.