Forest Schools in Santa Barbara

My oldest daughter’s first year of school was an interesting study in contrasts. Two days a week, she attended a small private preschool in an old officer’s home in San Francisco’s Presidio, and another two days a week, she attended a forest school under a canopy of eucalyptus trees, also in the Presidio. The schools were nearly identical apart from setting, yet the behavior of the children, and my daughter in particular, was totally different. There was simply less conflict outdoors. 

After years as an early childhood educator, Lia Grippo, who founded Wild Roots Forest School in Santa Barbara in 1998, saw the same thing. “I began to notice that consistently, when I took children beyond the bounds of fenced and curated playgrounds and classrooms and into natural settings, they were less stressed, more socially competent, required far less intervention, and learned with greater ease and joy,” she says.

What are the benefits of preschool in the forest?

Originally started in Denmark in the 1950s, forest schools are outdoor schools for early education. They tend to be child-led, play-based, experiential, and non-academic. “Being in natural settings with adults who are curious and engaged offers children health, creativity, competence, exercise in initiative, joy, and a sense of deep belonging to a world filled with all of our relations,” Lia explains.

The impact of attending forest school reaches well beyond the (outdoor) classroom, Lia explains. “The families of children attending forest schools find these qualities and connections with the world last far beyond their child's time in early years forest school programs,” she says. Having sent three daughters to three different forest schools, including Wild Roots, I can attest to this lasting impact.

My daughters all have a deep connection and tender relationship with nature. They are at ease in wild places, notice things I do not see — this morning, a chrysalis clinging to a concrete wall at their local elementary school unseen by over a hundred other passersby — and legitimately care about the Earth. I also believe forest school helped build their resiliency; rain or shine, trails open or closed, forest schools go on. And after three consecutive years outdoors, my children smoothly transitioned to elementary school; ironically, they were wildly excited to start “indoor” school (ha!). 

So what do forest school children actually do? 

They learn by both observing and doing. “Our classroom is quite literally in the middle of a salad bowl!” explains Wild Roots kindergarten teacher Jenn Sepulveda of their Steven’s Park location in the springtime. “We harvested wild greens for salad, medicine making, and pesto. We were serenaded by the creeks and birdsong. We cooked stick bread in the rain, made crowns of sycamore leaves, watched cicadas hatch from their larvae, and [learned to identify] poison oak all along our trail.” It’s experiential learning in the great outdoors.

Attending a Forest School

There are approximately 50 forest schools in California; Santa Barbara is home to three, including two programs that have been around for more than 20 years — Wild Roots and Wilderness Youth Project, or WYP — and a newer one, A Thousand Mornings. They offer nature immersion for the youngest learners through preschool programs, and WYP offers after-school programming for children from elementary through high school. Tuition at Wild Roots is on a need-based sliding scale, and WYP offers scholarships and subsidized programs for families needing financial assistance.

Academy for Forest Kindergarten Teachers

Santa Barbara is also home to this teaching organization co-founded by Lia Grippo. “The Academy grew out of a need for mentoring in a newly growing field where almost none existed at the time,” she says. “Those of us with experience had a responsibility to share what we had learned.” To date, Lia and her team have educated about 1,000 teachers nationally.