Welcome!
Wild Plants Can Sing Forest School is located in the heart of the beautiful Grainey valley in county Clare, Ireland, on 44 acres of wildflower meadows and the magical ancient oak woodland called Bunshoon Wood. This woodland can be found on the oldest maps of Ireland.
Marina Levitina is a a fully qualified Forest School Leader with many years of experience of working with children and teaching about native Irish flora and biodiversity. Marina is a Heritage in Schools specialist with the Heritage Council of Ireland, is certified in remote first aid, and has delivered many school visits to thousands of primary school children in counties Clare and Galway over the past several years.
Marina also delivers Forest School sessions for primary schools.
What is Forest School?
Forest School is an innovative educational approach to outdoor learning and play. It is a wonderful way of helping children to learn about Nature and about themselves, while developing a whole variety of skills, improving physical and mental health, and experiencing connection with the natural world outdoors.
Here at Wild Plants Can Sing we support the child's holistic development on all levels, including physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
Please read more here:
Benefits of Forest School
In the words of Richard Louv, the author of the acclaimed book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, “Contact with nature is as important to children as good nutrition and adequate sleep.”
Forest School has been shown to build confidence and resilience, improve physical and emotional well-being, and social and communications skills.
It helps build empathy for the natural world, as well as allowing experiences of joy and freedom ...
Please read more here:
Our Vision and Values
Activities at Forest School
Our Vision is to support all participants, children and adults, in reconnecting with Nature and developing confidence, compassion, self-responsibility, a sense of adventure, and empathy and respect for the natural world, through regular outdoor sessions in a woodland.
Read more about our Vision and Values here:
Each session includes seasonal activities that can range from plant identification walks in our species-rich meadow and ancient oak woodland, to making clay tree faces or clay animals; foraging; den-building and making fairy houses, depending on the age group. Each session is planned based on the preceding session and the developing interests of participants, in an on-going process of observation and discovery...
All our activities are risk assessed prior to each session.
Our Forest School Handbook contains our Policies and Procedures and is available to review.
"Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild.
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand"
W B Yeats
Music of the Plants
We sometimes help the plants perform in a Music of the Plants concert! We work with the Music of the Plants biofeedback device that allows the plants to play music, by sending electromagnetic waves through the biofeedback device... Here is a video about the Music of Violet, made by Marina and Violet: play video.
