Themed collection · For Forest School and outdoor educators

Forest School

Sensory play, games, crafts, tool and fire skills, and caring for your site, for Forest School leaders and outdoor educators.

72 Wilding activity guidesAll 72 for £12.00 · coming soon

Bought from re-wild before? Log in and you only pay for the Wilding activity guides you don’t already own.

🃏 Includes a printable card set: every Wilding activity guide as an A6 card (four to an A4 sheet) to spread out, plan with or use for a lucky dip. See a sample

See the whole collection at once. Plan a programme, pick tonight’s activity, or let the lucky dip choose for you. Tap any card to open its Wilding activity guide.

Tickle, prickle, guess!

Blindfold plaster casts

Blindfold recognition of leaves

Making a feather quill pen

Making a paintbrush

Making a stick frame

Making an elder pencil

Making clay prints

Making natural ink

Tree spirit

Making a dream catcher

Making a fat lamp

Making a hanging mobile

Exploring the understory

Flight pattern & paths

How old is this tree?

How to identify a tree

Sharpening & caring for a sheath knife

Getting to know a sheath knife

“Peeling a stick”

Building a stealthy fire

Closing down a fire

Finding natural tinder

Fire tending

Laying & using a V fire

Gathering seeds from plants & trees

Growing a pollinator habitat from seeds

Coiling a line

The right knot for the job

Safety, and where the Wilding activity guides come from

Look after yourself and others. Outdoor activities carry real risks: fire, tools, water, weather, heights, plants, fungi, animals and getting lost. Every Wilding activity guide includes safety notes, but you are responsible for your own safety and for anyone in your care. Supervise children closely, get the landowner's permission, follow the Countryside Code, never eat anything you cannot identify with complete certainty, and only light fires where it is allowed and safe. If in doubt, leave it out.

With gratitude to the lineage. Wilding and its Practice Keys are inspired by the work of Jon Young and colleagues: the core routines of nature connection in the 8 Shields approach, also known as Coyote Mentoring, shared in Coyote's Guide to Connecting with Nature (Young, Haas & McGown). Many of the Wilding activity guides grew from those routines.

These ways of noticing and belonging are far older than any book. They grow from the knowledge of Indigenous and land-based peoples around the world, who have lived in close relationship with the land for thousands of years and have kept that knowledge alive, often in the face of great loss. Jon Young describes 8 Shields as built on patterns of nature connection he found in Indigenous cultures around the world, and on what his mentors taught him, including the teachings passed down through Tom Brown Jr. from Grandfather Stalking Wolf. Our own ancestors in these islands once knew the land in this way too.

I offer Wilding with deep respect and thanks to all of them. It does not claim or copy any culture's ceremonies or sacred practices. It is a UK way of carrying forward simple, shared human ways of paying attention, giving thanks and belonging to a place. — Jay