The alternative school that embraces adventure, wins major business award

Nicki Farrell and Vicki Oliver encourage kids to climb trees, build rafts and explore the forest.  

The Wildlings Forest School, run in the open-air muddy banks of Petrie Creek at Burnside is a place where students can, quite literally, run wild. 

The Nambour enterprise that puts dirt back into childhood and encourages risky play is striking a chord with parents looking for an antidote to mainstream education. And on Saturday November 13 it attracted the attention of the business community when it won the Education & Training Category at the Sunshine Coast Business Awards. 

Founders Nicki Farrell and Vicki Oliver encourage kids to climb trees, explore the forest and cover themselves from head to toe in mud – all things that may be forbidden at a mainstream school.

“We encourage our children to use hand tools such as pen knives, bow saws and hand drills and teach them how to whittle and light fires from as early as they show interest,” said Nicki.

“We believe children are and have always been, capable and competent human beings. It’s our own perception of risk as adults that is the real issue of getting children back outdoors.

“Think about what we all used to do as children. Children are still capable of doing these things, perhaps even more so because they’re better risk assessors. What’s the difference for example between giving a child a whittling knife or a kitchen knife or scissors to use? How is shallow creek different to their bathtub at home? How is playing with a stick different to using a sharp pencil?”

Nicki and Vicki say getting kids outdoors has many benefits in addition to exercise, such as improved attitudes and behaviour, better social interactions, creativity and resilience. Allowing children to follow their own innate curiosity, leads to learning outcomes of equal, or greater importance, than in a classroom.

“If we remove the risk management side of life for children, they never learn how to navigate the real world on their own. They may doubt their own decision making skills,” said Vicki. 

“Some kids we’ve met have never touched mud or walked or gone a walk through a forest — here on the Sunshine Coast. They have no muscle tone, their bodies have no true live experience. Society has become scared of letting children be children.  Our aim as a business is simply to be a place where kids can be kids. Where we put the dirt back in to childhood.”

‘Just let them play’

“So if you want to help improve your child’s chances of academic success let them go outside, let them play in risky — we prefer the term adventurous ways — let them use real tools, let them use their outside voices, let them get muddy. Just let them play,” said Nicki.

The school offers different programs exploring a range of methods of engaging children (from babies to 12 year-olds) in nature. For more information go to www.wildlingsforestschool.com