Discover Michigan’s Premier Nature-Based Preschool
At Empowerment Education, we believe that nature is the best classroom. Our Outdoor Forest School offers families in North Oakland County a unique, licensed educational experience where children learn through exploration, play, and direct contact with the natural world. While traditional indoor classrooms can be stifling, limiting, and crowded, our program promotes a three pillar model of resilience, creativity, and exploration. These foundational principles create and cultivate a lifelong love of learning.
Why Choose Our Forest School Program?
We combine rich educational experiences and inquiry with the limitless potential for adventure in the natural world because the evidence shows it is effective, and it is the right thing to do. Here is what sets our program apart:
- Certified Instructors: Our staff are specially trained in forest school pedagogy. Additionally, we promote a terrific balance of risky play and safety protocols.
- Licensed Curriculum: The State of Michigan approves of both our staff and standards.
- Holistic Growth: Due to the struggle with mental health and socialization in our world, our organization focuses on social-emotional skills. Furthermore, physical coordination and problem-solving have changed in response to technology. In response to a changing world, we promote physical health and problem-solving daily sans technology at the Forest School. Kids deserve voice and choice at every age and every stage.
- Small Class Sizes: Our group limits section sizes because we believe in maximizing the attention and safety your child deserves.
- High Instructor-to-Student Ratios: Consequently, we never have more than 10 students to 1 instructor.
The Science Behind Outdoor Forest School Education
Research consistently shows that children who spend significant time outdoors develop stronger immune systems, better motor skills, and increased creativity. Recent research from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign demonstrates that a mountain of evidence showing the innumerable benefits of outdoor time on learning and health is rapidly forming. Recommendations by the UNESCO Chair on Health Education & Sustainability, as well as the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine stress indoor air quality and classroom microclimate as key indicators of healthy immune system development. Additionally, a report by the National Wildlife Federation highlights that “green time” effectively reduces stress and improves concentration in children. At our Outdoor Forest School, we leverage these benefits to create a learning environment that is impossible to replicate indoors.
Unlike a traditional classroom where students are often sedentary, our students are constantly moving, observing, and interacting. This hands-on approach aligns with the Michigan Department of Education standards for early childhood development, ensuring that while your child is having fun in the mud, they are also hitting critical developmental milestones.
Embracing the Seasons: A Year-Round Curriculum
One of the most common questions we hear is, “What do the children do all year?” At our Outdoor Forest School, the changing seasons provide a dynamic, ever-evolving source of wonder and opportunity for hands-on, engaging, inquiry-based learning. Unlike a static indoor classroom, our lesson plans adapt to the bounty of nature over time. This approach results in constant engagement and exciting, novel activities that relate to the big questions students have regarding the world around them.
Autumn: The Season of Harvest, Preparation, and Pumpkins
In the fall, our curriculum focuses on observation, chlorophyll, bug life, the magic of mushrooms, interconnectedness, sensory experiences like “Music of the Forest” and imagery exercises like “The Drama of Plants and Animals”. As the leaves change and fall, students learn about the role of chlorophyll and the life cycle of trees. We engage in harvest activities like collecting acorns, pinecones, and seeds, which refines motor skills, recognizing differences and similarities, visual acuity, balance, counting, sorting, grouping in sets, and more. Fall provides many opportunities for building shelters and honing imagination and visualization for extremely fun and practical aims. While LEGOs provide opportunities for engineering with neatly machined, clean cut bricks, the outdoors provides opportunities for rough cut, high-challenge, high-fun hands-on engineering, teamwork, and problem-solving before the winter sets in.
Winter: Resilience, Phase Changes, Animal Tracking, and Strength
Winter is a magical, quiet, and beautiful time in the forest. Many use the cold as an excuse to stay indoors, but in reality, winter is one of the best times to observe animal behaviors, study water in different forms, reflect, enjoy the quiet, and build strength, balance, and dexterity. Students learn to identify and differentiate between different types of animal tracks in the snow. They observe and gain vocabulary for similarities and differences between rabbits, deer, squirrels, and more. This activity sharpens pattern recognition and deductive reasoning.
We also study water in different phases– solid (ice and snow), liquid (water), and gas (fog, clouds, and steam). Experiments highlighting the different densities of ice, snow, and water give students introductions to concepts vital in the basic and applied sciences. Additionally, students learn vocabulary for describing how snow and ice are different, and language for describing crystalline solids. All the while, students will build physical coordination when they encounter different textures, depths, and difficulties of terrain due to the nature of walking through snow and ice.
Spring: Rebirth and Botany
As the snow melts, our focus shifts to the awakening of plant and animal life. We plant spring crops and tend gardens of native plants, herbs, and edible crops. The blooming flowers and sprouting plants in our garden give us an insight into what might be happening in the forest beyond. The growth of plants allows bugs, birds, and other small animals to find sources of food outside of their burrows. Children may tap maple trees for sap during the spring for one of our favorite multi-day activities. This season is prime time for “cause and effect” learning as frogs spawn, eggs develop into tadpoles, and tadpoles into frogs. Mud is abundant and play with mud is highly encouraged, introducing young immune systems to eubacteria that will promote lifelong well-being as well as awesome messy memories. The spring is many folks’ favorite season, as it is when many discover the deep respect for the interconnected nature of humans, organisms, and the environments that hold us all together. When humans spend time in nature, we tend to realize that we all are truly more-than-human.
A Day in the Life at the Empowerment Outdoor Forest School
What does a typical day look like at a Michigan Outdoor Forest School? It begins with our Check-In, where we make sure that every student is greeted, and has all of the supplies they need for a perfect outdoor adventure before heading off to the “Morning Circle”. During morning circle, students gather on log stumps to greet one another and plan the day’s adventure. This routine builds community and social-emotional skills, a core pillar of our mission.
From there, we transition into a short free free play session where students can let out some physical energy and form stronger connections with each other. Afterwards, we circle up to prepare for “Exploration Time.” Depending on the season, this might involve tracking animal footprints in the snow, observing how ice forms on trees, stones, and across rivers and ponds, identifying native Michigan plant species, or constructing shelters from fallen branches. These activities are not just play; they are complex problem-solving tasks that require teamwork and critical thinking.
Lunch is enjoyed picnic-style, followed by a quiet reflection period. Sometimes this reflection is augmented with a guided meditation, a native birdsong identification activity, or the simple soundtrack of the surrounding natural world. We believe that rest is just as important as play. Our day concludes with a “Closing Circle” where children share their “highlight of the day,” fostering public speaking skills, active listening, and gratitude. You can read more about our specific daily schedules on our About Us page, and by joining our mailing list below.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What age groups do you accept for Forest School? A: We currently accept children ages 3-6 for our preschool program. All children must be toilet independent.
Q: What happens if it rains or snows? A: There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing! We embrace all seasons. However, in cases of extreme weather (thunder or sub-zero temps), we have a heated indoor shelter available.
Q: Is the curriculum licensed? A: Yes, we are fully licensed by the State of Michigan and our instructors are certified in Forest School pedagogy.
Safety, Gear, and Preparedness
We understand that sending your child / children to an Outdoor Forest School requires a different level of preparation than a traditional preschool. A common adage, “There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing” may be great advice for the majority of cases, but clearly there are exceptions. Safety isn’t just a slogan, it is our priority. Our approach to safety is proactive, ensuring that every child is comfortable, secure, and ready to learn and play.
The Importance of Proper Gear
To thrive in our program, students and parents will receive a short, simple training on how to properly layer clothing. The base layer should be a moisture wicking, thin fabric. The layer over that should be thicker and more insulating. The final layer should be highly insulating and waterproof. This is the recipe for success whether you’re dressing the feet, legs, midsection, or the face and head. With the proper clothing, children aren’t feeling the frigid cold, nor the blistering heat. In fact, the feelings experienced by well-dressed children exploring a big forest are almost exclusively unbridled freedom and excitement. The handbook includes a comprehensive list of gear, and we will have a gear lending library available for families so that every student has improved access to this important resource. We are prepared in case a student forgets a layer, has a hole in their sock, or loses their hat.
Risk Assessment and Risky Play
You might see children climbing logs or balancing on rocks and worry about safety. In the forest school philosophy, this is called “Risky Play,” and it is vital for development. However, we are required by the state to generate a comprehensive Outdoor Benefit-Risk Assessment for licensure. This document is regularly updated with new observations and our daily protocols for making sure that the risks of certain types of play never overshadow the benefits. In addition, risky play is always conducted under “Risk Assessment” protocols. Our certified instructors teach children how to assess their own safety—checking if a branch is rotten before stepping on it or testing the stability of a rock. This teaches children self-regulation and judgment, skills that keep them safer in the long run than simply avoiding all risks. How many times have you met an adult who could have benefitted from a better self-regulation skill set? Your child will develop an amazing toolkit day-by-day, step-by-step, with caring, understanding guides along the way at our Outdoor Forest School.
Health and Hygiene
Being outdoors actually reduces the transmission of common indoor illnesses. Fresh air disperses airborne viruses effectively. For hygiene, we utilize portable hand-washing stations with fresh water and biodegradable soap, ensuring that hands are washed before all meals and after using our portable restroom facilities. We also perform tick checks and teach children how to be “insect aware” without being fearful.
Serving North Oakland County Families
Empowerment Education is proud to bring this unique Outdoor Forest School model to families in our local community. Our mission is always to maintain the highest standards for our program, and one of those standards is affordability. In order to keep programs affordable, we partner with local organizations, and continually monitor public and private grant opportunities. Indeed, choosing a preschool is one of the biggest decisions a family makes. That is why we ensure that every day is an adventure filled with epiphanies and discovery for the young learners in your family. Our goal is to give you security in your decision so you can work, live, and love your personal, professional, and family life. We always strive for transparency and partnership with our families, and we are so excited to partner with you.
We invite you to tour our grounds, meet our certified staff, and see the magic for yourself. Whether you’re coming from Clarkston, Lake Orion, Oxford, Waterford, Commerce Township, White Lake, or Milford, our campus is a convenient nature haven for your child. Don’t let another pass by in a fluorescent-lit, cramped, stuffy classroom. Choose the open air, the fresh scent of flowers, and the endless classroom of the woodlands. Nature awaits you with open arms, and we are honored to act as your guide.
Developing the Leaders of Tomorrow
Ultimately, the goal of Empowerment Education’s Outdoor Forest School is not just to prepare children for kindergarten, or for camping, but for life. The skills learned in the forest—resilience in the face of uncomfortable weather, making strong bonds with your community, problem-solving with limited resources, and empathy for living creatures—are the skills of future leaders.
By choosing a nature-based education, you are giving your child a foundation of confidence. They learn that they are capable, that they are part of a larger world, and that they can overcome obstacles. We are honored to partner with parents who share this vision of a holistic, adventurous, and compassionate education.
Join the Adventure Today
Our upcoming semester has limited spaces. Fill out the form below to receive updates, join our priority list, and most importantly, to give your child the gift of nature-based education at Michigan’s premier Outdoor Forest School.