Naomi Walmsley

100 Forest School Activities is a bumper book that teaches kids how to thrive outside, through outdoor crafts, bushcraft skills and nature-based play. This lively collection of outdoor activities is an essential guide for connecting with the natural world, whatever the weather. Packed with ideas for primary schoolers to teens, there are projects for rainy days, imaginative outdoor games, bushcraft basics, gloriously messy crafts and activities to increase children’s awareness of nature. Forest School encourages children to get up close to nature in a fun yet informative way. Through controlled risk taking in a natural environment, it improves children’s confidence and self-esteem while boosting their social skills and resilience. It’s also the perfect antidote to too much screen time and classroom-induced fatigue. Activities include things to do on a rainy day, outdoor play, bushcraft skills, nature-based crafts, and pastimes that increase awareness of the natural world.

Forest School Handbook is lively collection of activities, crafts, bushcraft skills and nature-based play which will inspire kids to thrive outside. Whether just popping out for a walk, going camping or exploring in the woods, this handy-sized book will be your essential guide for connecting with the natural world. Packed with ideas and activities for children of all ages, there are bushcraft basics, survival skills, nature crafts and ideas for both energising and peaceful outdoor play. Encouraging controlled risk taking, boosting social skills, wellbeing and a healthy resilience, this is the ultimate way to avoid battles over screen time and classroom-induced fatigue. Build a shelter from what you find around you, design a natural collage, tie useful knots, get to know a tree, light a fire, filter dirty water, make charcoal, go on a night walk, make a bug hotel, create a mini village, whittle a stick and much more. Aimed at parents, outdoor teachers or anyone passionate about getting back to basicsGrab-and-go size makes it easy to pack in your outdoor kit bagWritten by award-winning outdoor specialists, with detailed knowledge of Forest School practices and who are experienced leading school groups either as a thrilling woodland class outing or onlineIncludes traditional Forest School activities and beyond. Catering for older children who are ready to explore more involved primitive skills and bushcraftPlaying and learning outside in nature has been shown to benefit children in many ways, such as improved moods, concentration, confidence and self-esteemForest School Adventure has sold c.35,000 copies and been translated into French, German, Czech and Italian

If you imagined that all Stone Age people lived in caves, were not very clever, not very clean and said "Ugg" a lot, then think again. Marking the start of all human history, the Stone Age lasted around 3.5 million years (the last part of that was only 71 grand parents ago!). Delve into that incredible time with this book packed full of amazing facts, information, crafts, storytelling and myth debunking to find out what it was really like to live as a hunter gatherer. Dotted through the book are step-by-step craft activities and recipes that give you first-hand experience of some vital Stone Age skills making a Mesolithic shelter, fat lamps, a digging stick, creating cave art, making a bow and arrow and a fishing hook are just a few. AGES: 5 to 11 AUTHOR: Naomi Walmsley runs Outback2Basics with her partner Dan Westall from their patch of woodland in Shropshire, UK. Specialising in bushcraft and Stone Age skills, they provide unique experiences for school children and teachers to connect to nature. Naomi is a qualified bushcraft instructor and Forest School Leader and believes that every child should be able to safely light a fire and have at least ten uses for a stick by the age of ten. She has also written for many magazines, including Bushcraft & Survival Skills, LivingWoods and Juno. So passionate are they about the Stone Age way of life, they have actually lived and breathed it for themselves. Naomi and Dan undertook a five-month Stone Age immersion experience in the US in 2010, living in the wilderness without any modern equipment, profoundly influencing their lives and teaching. Recently (Sept 2020),they appeared in Channel 4's fascinating documentary Surviving the Stone Age. A three-part series filmed in Bulgaria with six other Stone-Age experts living as a tribe of hunter gatherers for one month. Naomi has co-authored two previous books for GMC Publications; Forest School Adventure and Urban Forest School. 50 photographs, 200 illustrations