Best Forest School Activities for Large Groups
Are you looking for easy, fun forest school activities for large groups of kids? Forest school nature activities provide a unique opportunity for kids to connect with the natural world and learn in an outdoor space. From building shelters and dens out of branches and leaves to identifying different plants and animals, at forest school, children are encouraged to use their creativity and curiosity to explore the wilderness around them. However, sometimes it’s hard to come up with nature activities that are suitable for large groups of kids to do all once. Forest school should be full of hands-on activities that not only foster a sense of independence and self-reliance but also promote a deep appreciation for the environment but that’s a challenge with lots of kids! Here’s our best forest school activities that are suitable for large groups such as forest school activities for full classes of 30+ primary school kids!
Benefits of Forest School for Kids of all ages
One exciting aspect of forest school activities is the focus on sensory exploration and getting kids out into the fresh air. Children are encouraged to touch, smell, listen, and observe all the wonders that nature has to offer. This sensory-rich experience helps kids develop a strong connection with the natural world whilst honing their observation skills. By engaging all their senses, kids are able to truly immerse themselves in the magic of the forest environment. All of our outdoor learning activities below focus on providing kids with a sensory experience in the great outdoors. Forest school nature activities often include opportunities for unstructured play and free exploration. This allows children to take charge of their learning experience while gaining confidence in their abilities to navigate and interact with the natural world independently which can help foster a love for nature that lasts a lifetime.
Nature Scavenger Hunt Ideas
When planning forest school activities for large groups, it’s important to consider activities that encourage teamwork and collaboration. Group games like scavenger hunts or obstacle courses can provide a fun and interactive way for children to bond and work together in the natural environment. Children can explore the school grounds or nearby park while searching for specific items like leaves, rocks, and flowers. You can read our full article to find all out ideas for nature scavenger hunts for every season and different age groups. There are lots of outdoor scavenger hunt ideas for younger children as well as ideas like photo scavenger hunts for teenagers. With this backyard bug scavenger hunt, kids will learn more about beneficial insects, get outdoors, and get active!
Another good idea for large group forest school activities is to organise a circle time storytelling session around a campfire. Gathering around a crackling fire under the stars can create a magical atmosphere where imaginations can run wild and new friendships can form. Invite children to share their own nature-inspired stories which adds an element of personal expression and cultural enrichment to the experience, making it both educational and entertaining for all participants. Try including singing songs or hot chocolate as a fun way to end a forest school session or try some outdoor cooking ideas for kids. Don’t forget to take the opportunity to teach them about fire safety too!
Physical Activity Forest School Games
Another engaging outdoor activity is a sports day where students participate in various games and races. This allows children to develop teamwork, communication skills, coordination, and sportsmanship in a fun and active environment. By incorporating different types of games such as relay races, sack races, and tug-of-war, students can showcase their unique strengths and abilities. Use items such as hula hoop, bean bags, tree trunks as balance beams. Try to incorporate the trees in your woodland setting as markers and encourage kids to take part in teams or small groups. You can also include some well-known outdoor group games such as tag, beach ball volleyball, 40-40. Read here for more outdoor games for kids to play in a wood. These also make great forest school party games too!
Try encouraging kids into den building as a team building game. Kids can create their own mini mud shops or a mud kitchen.
Art Activities for Forest School
To promote creativity and imagination, teachers can organise an outdoor art session where students can create colourful chalk pavement masterpieces or nature-inspired crafts using nature items and natural materials found outdoors. This hands-on activity encourages self-expression and connects children with their environment in a meaningful way. Or Hapa Zome is a good art activity for large groups of kids. It requires very little set up or equipment and makes a natural piece of art, kids can take home. Find out more about Hapa Zome here.
Forest School Ideas for large groups of Kids
Here’s our favourite forest school nature crafts that work well for large groups of kids.
Make a Nature Mandala: Making a nature mandala is a great way to get creative and have some fun with kids outdoors and it can be created with groups of any size. It is simple, fun, and doesn’t take any preparation. It’s a great opportunity to tie in nicely with religions taught in the KS1 curriculum as well.
Daisy Letter Boards: Forest school is perfect for adding some outdoor education for early years!Try making these letter boards to help kids with their letter recognition. They could fill these with leaves fallen on the ground if you did not want to encourage them to pick the daisies.
Leaf Rubbings and Pine Cone Painting: Nature-based crafts such as leaf rubbings or pine cone painting can help foster creativity while connecting children with the beauty of the outdoors, they’re also good for helping young kids develop fine motor skills.
Leaf Threading: Natural Leaf Threading Activity – engage with nature, get creative and develop fine motor skills. Fun for kids of all ages!
Leaf Crowns are easy activities for larger groups and don’t take a lot of time to set up. Try doing the leaf crowns activity in the Autumn months where there are plenty of leaves on the ground for the children to choose from. You could also make leaf bunting and hang it up in a special tree for the children to admire. Here are over 100 nature crafts for kids to inspire any forest school leader to try out new things!
Muddy Faces: Collect pieces of nature and make clay faces. For some inspiration – see these fun muddy faces!
Nature Paintbrushes: Make your own nature paintbrushes and use them to create a large collaborative painting! See here for inspiration. You’ll also love our other Stick Crafts and Activities for Kids here.
Nature Frames: Create a nature frame featuring elements of what’s around you with this fun stick activity! Kids love collecting the coolest things they can find and making their own unique piece of art!
Fairy Houses: Making fairy houses is a great construction activity that they can work on in groups to develop their teamwork skills. See some great fairy house examples here.
Flower pot Windchimes: Try this great flower pot craft which requires some set up with resources but is easy for older kids to complete by themselves.
Nature Stick Art: Grab some sticks, natural objects, loose parts and paint a fun twig decoration! Find more stick craft ideas for kids here.
Leaf Prints: Choose deep veined leaves and make leaf prints with crayon or pencil. These can be a starting point for a great nature display table in your classroom. Find out more of our leaf crafts for kids here.
Andy Goldsworthy Art Pieces: Tie in learning about artists into your forest school with this brilliant Art project.
Pebble Puppets: I don’t know of a more underappreciated object than the humble pebble. It can be used for building, crafting, and discovering. Read here for more ideas of how to use pebbles to make story puppets.
Sticks and Shapes: A fun game for preschoolers or reception age is to get kids to create different shapes with sticks! You can turn this into a great game by using a timer and getting them to race to create their shape.
Blackberry Painting: In small teams, kids can mash up some blackberries and use it to paint on a large sheet you can hang between two trees!
Set up a slackline: All you need is two trees for kids to practise their balancing! We have this slackline here and the kids love it!
Nature Boats – Get kids to work in teams and create a nature boat out of materials they find in the woods. Find out how to make a nature boat here.
Leaf lanterns: All you need for this activity is small plastic or glass jars and PVA glue. Kids can glue the leaves onto the jar – add tealights to make a pretty lantern! You can buy large packs of battery tealights here for extra safety with a large group.
Sensory Nature Cutting Tray: Enjoy a Sensory Nature Cutting Tray! It’s such a fun way for kids to engage with nature, stimulate the senses and develop scissor skills.
Acorn/ conker People – Collect Acorns and Conkers and use a simple biro or permanent marker to transform them into little play people! It’s easy to make bodies out of clay or other nature items.
Make a Bug House: Kids will have a great time building a Bug House. This activity can be completed in teams and you can add in some friendly competition by seeing how many insects they can spot in each other’s bug house.
Bird Feeders: An easy forest school craft that encourages nature along to your forest school space is to make homemade bird feeders. Depending on the size of your group, there are a variety of different homemade bird feeder ideas to make here. The easiest is to use a pine cone and peanut butter!
Seed Bombs: Kids love getting muddy at forest school! Try mixing some wildflower seeds with soil to make seed bombs – kids will love throwing them to decorate an area with flowers.
Outdoor Literacy and Numeracy Ideas: If you’re teaching EYFS or for more outdoor learning ideas that bring English and Maths outside , try these simple ideas to take literacy and numeracy outside.
Nature Journaling for Forest School: If you have a weekly forest school, it’s a lovely idea for the kids to create their own nature journal that they add to week on week. This helps develop their creative and literacy skills as well as give them a sense of pride as they develop a journal they can refer back to. You can read our post here which gives loads of ideas for ‘how to start a nature journal with kids‘ and we have ‘lots of nature journal prompt ideas here too!’
For more outdoor activities that work well in a woodland area, you’ll love our ideas for 24 things to do with kids on a woodland walk, which has lots of ideas for outdoor activities.
Games to play at Forest School: Read here for more of our favourite forest school games, which work really well if you have a large group of kids at your forest school.
