Nurseries & early years
The forest school morning is the best two hours of your week and the worst two hours of your admin. Observations scribbled on a wet notepad, typed up at nine o'clock at night, then typed up again into your nursery system. This app takes the record where the learning happens, in the woods, on your phone, with no signal, and tags it to the areas of learning while you stand there watching.
Catch the moment as it happens: a photo, a line of what she actually did, and the areas of learning it speaks to. It's on the child's journey before you've walked back to the gate. No notepad to decipher, no evening spent typing up a morning you half remember.
Mark the register and the app works out where you stand, live, as children arrive and adults come and go. Under ratio and it says so, before you've walked anyone into the trees. Fire lit or tools out, and the number it holds you to changes with it.
A child without photo consent cannot be photographed. Not "shouldn't", cannot: the camera won't open for her. Allergies, medical notes and who may collect her come from the parent's own portal, so they're right, and they're there before she arrives.
Why it's different
It assumes a room, a wifi signal and a keyboard. So the forest school morning gets recorded the only way it can be: on paper, then again at a desk. Two records of the same two hours, and the second one is always thinner than the first, because you're writing it from memory at the end of a long day. This is built the other way round. The phone in your pocket is the record, it works with no signal at all, and it syncs itself when you're back in range. What you write in the woods is the observation, tagged to the areas of learning, on the child's learning journey, ready to share with a parent who wasn't there.
Ada · balancing on the log
"Crossed the fallen log unaided, then turned back to help Rowan across."
The whole point of the woods is the log she might fall off. A risk-benefit assessment says so out loud: here is the hazard, here is what the child gains, and here is what we do about it. It is a very different document from a risk assessment that only wants the hazard gone, and it is the one the forest school approach actually asks for. Build yours once, stack it onto every session that needs it, and log what you decided on the day, in the moment, while the ground is still wet. See risk-benefit assessments, or take a free template and make it yours.
Forest school is a long-term process in a woodland, with a qualified leader, supported risk and a child-led session. The app is shaped around that, because it was built by a practitioner who runs it. It nudges you towards the way the Forest School Association describes good practice, and it tracks the things that actually mark a child's development outdoors: confidence, creativity, resilience, independence and wellbeing. The evidence for anyone who asks is a by-product of doing the job properly, not a separate job you do afterwards.
Leaders, assistants, students and volunteers all get a free account, and their DBS, paediatric first aid and qualifications live on their own professional record and travel with them. Only the nursery needs a plan: £29 a month flat, VAT included, for the whole team, unlimited children and as many woods as you use. See full pricing.
Nursery questions
No, and it doesn't try to. Your nursery system runs the nursery: fees, occupancy, the daily register indoors. This runs the forest school: the session, the woods, the ratio, the supported risk and the observations you make out there. Most nurseries keep both, and use this for the sessions their other system was never designed to hold.
Yes. Tag an observation to the areas of learning as you write it, and it builds into the child's journey alongside everything else you record. We've written up how we approach it in EYFS observations outdoors.
Then use yours. You set the ratio you work to, and the app holds you to it, tightening automatically when there's fire or tools involved. It counts every adult on the register, including the ones who aren't staff. There's more in forest school ratios explained.
That's the normal case, and it's the case this was built for. Everything works with no signal: register, ratio, risk log, photos, observations. It saves to the phone and uploads itself when you're back in range. See works offline.
Set your nursery up free for 30 days, no card needed. Run one forest school morning on it and see.