Forest schools flourish as youngsters log off and learn from nature

After months of home schooling, more and more children are ditching their tech and heading outdoors

After more than a year of lockdowns, with limited access to nature, Magdalena Begh was delighted when her six-year-old daughter came home from forest school and informed her she had found three rat skeletons. One of them, Alia told her, was pretty fresh". These little observations are very crucial to their learning - it's amazing," says Begh.

Since Alia and her sister Hana, nine, started going to the Urban Outdoors Adventures in Nature after-school club in north London in June, they have used clay, learned about insects and made campfires, marmalade and bows and arrows.