How Forest School for Life delivers beautifully

The EYFS framework is an Early Years Curriculum, the precursor to the National Curriculum. It sets out the standards for learning, development, and care for children from birth to five across the UK. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s often interpreted through the lens of indoor environments, standardised approaches, structured activities, and linear progress and development markers for children.

Every few years the EYFS Statutory Requirements are updated and refreshed and settings have a legal obligation to shift their processes. We have designed our curriculum around these refreshed educational programmes. Alongside the EYFS is a Non-Statutory curriculum guidance loved by most Practitioners, called “Development Matters”, published by the Department for Education and continually revised in line with new research. We keep copies of this throughout the setting as reference markers and update learning journals using this non-statutory guidance to evidence observations of growth and development.

As a Practitioner you can find copies on the DfE or .Gov website here – Development Matters – GOV.UK

As a Parent wishing to know more about What to Expect in the EYFS you can download a pdf here – What-to-expect-in-the-EYFS.pdf in this easy to use guide.

At Forest School for Life, we honour the EYFS, and we deliver it through mud, movement, and meaning.

🌱 The EYFS is setup with seven areas of learning. Three are “Prime Areas” and four are “Specific Areas”. Here we give you a brief overview of those areas without deep diving into each subject to highlight how our environment enables the delivery of the curriculum.

🧠Prime Area – Personal, Social & Emotional Development [PSED]

Our woodland setting is a living classroom for emotional literacy. Children learn to self-regulate through risk, reflection, and relational support. They build friendships across ages, navigate conflict with adult scaffolding, and develop a strong sense of self through autonomy and choice.

“He used to struggle with transitions. Now he walks the trail with confidence and checks in with others along the way.” ,  FSFL parent

🗣️ Prime Area – Communication & Language [C&L]

We’re living in a post‑Covid world, Communication & Language has become one of the major pressure points in the EYFS. Both in an abstract, policy-driven way, and in the very real, everyday observations. As an industry our Practitioners have seen the impact on the quieter children, reduced confidence, fewer conversational turns, less peer modelling, and a noticeable dip in the rich back‑and‑forth that underpins everything else.

Outside in the shared woodland spaces, language grows differently: it’s shared, it’s social, it’s embodied. It belongs to everyone, regardless of age or stage. And that, more than anything, reaffirmed my belief that mixed‑age, outdoor learning isn’t just a preference. It’s a necessity for childhood today.

The forest is full of stories. Children narrate their play, describe textures, ask questions, and engage in rich dialogue with peers and adults. We model language through companionable learning, and vocabulary blooms organically, from “lichen” to “kindness.”

🏃‍♀️ Prime Area – Physical Development [PD]

The environment is everything in the outdoors, we were blessed with a landscape to make our own over time and it has evolved, guided by the children and visitors interactions. Observing how the children use the spaces and reflecting on what they crave and what they need more of. We want to make their play spaces “thrilling!”.

From climbing logs to balancing on ropes, every movement in the woods builds gross and fine motor skills. Tool use, shelter building, and nature crafts support dexterity, coordination, and strength. We also support healthy habits through meal rituals, growing our own foods, hydration routines, and body awareness.

In early years we talk about the children learning best when they feel the thrill of discovery. This is backed by several key voices.

Margeret McMillan wrote passionately about the “joy,” “delight,” and “vitality” that outdoor play awakens in children. Her work underpins the idea that learning must be felt, not just delivered.

Loris Malaguzzi spoke about the “excitement of discovery” and the emotional charge that comes when children follow their own ideas. His concept of the hundred languages is rooted in the belief that children learn through thrilling, self-chosen exploration.

Dewey described learning as most powerful when it is experiential, surprising, and connected to real life. He emphasised that curiosity and emotional engagement are the engines of deep learning.

David Sobel writes about “ecophilia” the love of the natural world and how children learn best when they feel wonder, excitement, and a sense of adventure outdoors.

When observing and measuring the value of a child’s play we often use the Involvement & Wellbeing scales. Dr. Ferre Laevers concept of high involvement is the idea of children learning most deeply when they are captivated, energised, and emotionally invested.

🌸 Specific Areas in Action

🔢 Specific Area – Mathematics [M]

At its heart, Maths is about children making sense of their world through pattern, quantity, comparison, movement, and meaningful problem‑solving. It’s not worksheets or just counting; it’s the deep, embodied understanding that grows through play, conversation, and exploration.

🌱 What maths really is in the EYFS

A few core ideas sit at the centre:

1. Number sense

Children begin to understand quantity, counting, “how many,” “more,” “less,” and the relationships between numbers. This is the foundation for all later maths.

2. Pattern and relationships

Spotting, copying, extending, and creating patterns helps children understand structure, predictability, and logic.

3. Shape, space and measure

Children explore size, weight, capacity, distance, height, time, and the properties of shapes, all through hands-on, physical experiences.

4. Problem‑solving

Maths in the EYFS is about thinking things through:

• How can I make this tower taller
• Which container holds more
• How do we share these sticks fairly

It’s reasoning, not just answers.

5. Language of maths

Maths is deeply linguistic. Words like big, small, heavy, full, empty, before, after, next, equal, share, match, sort are all part of mathematical development. This is why outdoor learning is such a powerful accelerator the language emerges naturally through real experiences.

Children count acorns, measure sticks, compare leaf sizes, and explore spatial reasoning through den building. Maths is embedded in real-world tasks, making it meaningful and memorable. Maths in the EYFS is:

• pouring water
• collecting conkers
• building dens
• comparing sticks
• noticing footprints
• counting birds
• making patterns with leaves
• sharing snacks
• climbing higher
• timing how long it takes to run to the tree

It’s lived, felt, and discovered not delivered.

📚 Specific Area – Literacy [L]

At its core, literacy in the EYFS is about meaning-making: children understanding that language carries ideas, emotions, stories, instructions, identities, and possibilities. It’s the weaving together of speaking, listening, mark‑making, storytelling, symbols, print, and imagination.

🌿 What literacy really is in the EYFS

A few strands sit at the heart of it:

1. Language and communication

Before children ever pick up a pencil, they are building literacy through conversation, storytelling, role play, songs, rhymes, and shared attention. This is the foundation for everything that follows.

2. A love of stories

Literacy begins when children feel held by narrative, when they hear stories, retell them, adapt them, and live them out in play. Books are one route, but so are oral stories, puppets, story stones, and the tales children invent themselves.

3. Mark‑making as expression

Early writing is not handwriting; its children realising that marks carry meaning. Mud, charcoal, sticks, chalk, water, clay, sand, all of these are legitimate writing tools in the EYFS.

4. Environmental print

Signs, labels, symbols, maps, recipes, lists, menus, trail markers, children learn that print exists to help us navigate the world.

5. Phonological awareness

Rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, sound play, and listening games build the auditory foundations for later reading.

We built The Willows, our library cabin, complete with a warm stove and that unmistakable Hugg‑ah feeling. It’s a place where stories feel held, not stored, a space children wander into because it calls to them, not because they’re marched there.

And literacy doesn’t stay contained. We let it travel. Books and print move freely around the wider woods. Story baskets appear under trees. Laminated prints become provocations tucked into branches. Children carry maps, treasure clues, recipe cards for mud‑kitchen potions, and labels they’ve made themselves. They mark‑make with charcoal on logs, with sticks in mud, with chalk on tree stumps. They retell stories through movement, sound, and imaginative play.

This is literacy in its truest form, embodied, joyful, relational, and rooted in the real world. We offer mark-making with mud, charcoal, and natural tools. Children create eco-journals, story trails, and collaborative books. Story telling emerges collaboratively through play, especially around the fire!

🌍 Specific Area – Understanding the World [UtW]

Understanding the World is one of the most expansive, generous areas of the EYFS, and it comes alive most naturally in the outdoors. It’s the part of the curriculum that invites children to notice, wonder, compare, question and care. It helps them piece together how life works, nature, people, places, materials, cultures, seasons, creatures, communities, and begin to understand their place within it. Rather than being taught in isolation, it grows through lived experience, through the small daily encounters that help children make sense of the world around them.

In the woods, this learning becomes embodied. Children feel the weather shift on their skin, watch fungi appear overnight, notice bird calls change with the seasons, and see ice melt or leaves decay. They begin to understand cause and effect, interdependence and the rhythms of nature simply by being immersed in it. Mixed‑age groups deepen this further: younger children learn through watching, older children learn through modelling, and everyone experiences community as something real and relational. Time becomes meaningful through seasonal rituals, light changes and the natural pace of outdoor days.

Our setting is a gateway to ecological empathy. Children observe seasonal changes, explore habitats, and engage with natural history through sessions with our team: Wildlife. They learn about life cycles, conservation, and their place in the ecosystem. Alongside this, children explore materials, tools and simple technologies in ways that make physical concepts tangible. They test, tinker, combine, build, break and rebuild. They learn about people, families, celebrations and differences through shared stories and shared experiences. Understanding the World becomes woven into every step, every question, every discovery. It isn’t an activity, it’s the heartbeat of outdoor learning, and it’s delivered effortlessly when children are given the freedom to explore a world that is already teaching them.

🎨 Specific Area – Expressive Arts & Design [EAD]

Expressive Arts and Design is the EYFS area that gives children permission to create, imagine, experiment and express themselves in ways that words alone can’t hold. It’s where ideas become visible, where feelings find form, and where children learn that there is no single “right” way to make or do or be. In the early years, EAD is not about producing perfect artwork or rehearsed performances, it’s about exploration, sensory richness, storytelling, movement, music, and the freedom to follow an idea wherever it leads.

In the woods, this learning becomes wonderfully expansive. Children mix mud, charcoal, water and clay to create their own palettes. They use sticks, stones, leaves and feathers as tools and materials. They build dens, sculpt with natural resources, and turn fallen branches into instruments. Movement becomes expressive as they dance with the wind, stomp through puddles, balance on logs, or act out stories beneath the trees. Soundscapes emerge from birdsong, rustling leaves, crackling fires and the rhythms children create themselves. Every corner of the woodland becomes a stage, a studio, a gallery, a rehearsal space.

Nature is our palette. Children create transient art, build sculptures, and compose woodland music. Creativity is celebrated in every form, from leaf crowns to collaborative murals. And because the outdoors removes the pressure of perfection, children take creative risks more freely. They collaborate, imitate, adapt and invent. They tell stories with their whole bodies, create characters from found objects, and use the environment as both inspiration and canvas. Expressive Arts and Design becomes again, something lived rather than delivered joyful, sensory, imaginative and rooted in the natural world.

🧡 The Forest School for Life difference

Without wanting to sounds like an M&S advert – We don’t just tick boxes; we grow whole humans. Our delivery of the EYFS is:

• Child-led: Honouring autonomy and curiosity
• Emotionally attuned: Prioritising attachment and regulation
• Ecologically rooted: Embedding sustainability and stewardship
• Inclusive: Welcoming all abilities, all rhythms, all stories
• Long-term: Supporting development over years, not weeks

We also maintain detailed observations, learning journals, and parent reflections to track progress and celebrate growth, aligned with EYFS outcomes but expressed through real experiences. These are shared with parents and families termly and we invite you to contribute so the document becomes a living diary of your child’s journey.

We are in pursuit of nurturing confident, world-ready learners through relational pedagogy and ecological engagement. I hope you find this inspiring and hear our passion!

🌿Victoria Furness
Founder | Forest School Leader | BA, MA | Mother
Forest School For Life

www.forestschoolforlife.co.uk
📍 Wymondham, Norfolk
🌱 Nurturing children to be confident and world ready

📣 At Forest School For Life, EYFS isn’t a framework we follow, it’s a foundation we bring to life.
👉 Want to see it in motion? Book a visit or explore our Baby and Flexi programmes

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🌲 #EYFSInNature #ForestSchoolForLife #EarlyYearsExcellence #TeamWildlife