"We are in an ongoing mentorship with Forest Schooled and it is truly incredible. In one of our meetings with Caylin, she asked what we are most nervous about with our brand new forest school program. 

Both of us felt the same small fear: boredom. We felt so nervous about children being bored/not entertained at our program.

Caylin encouraged us to think about why this makes us nervous? Why is boredom a bad thing? 

This led to a revelation: boredom is perfectly fine! In fact, it can open doors of creativity and innovation. If someone is constantly entertained and given things to do, there is less mental space for new ideas. It provides us with an opportunity to come up with an idea to combat that boredom. Essentially, it is a psychological discomfort that tells us to come up with something to do. 

With all that being said, believe it or not, children have never been bored at our programs. Nature provides a space for exploration, freedom and creativity. We've witnessed children engaged for hours with nothing but yarn and a few trees, leaves and rocks. 

However, we know that a "bored child" is bound to happen at some point and we will welcome the situation with open, innovative arms!! And those arms usually involve paint, nature crafts, or making something fun out of items found in the forest."

"Boredom is not as simple as having nothing to do.

"When we’re bored, there are two key things happening in our mind,” says John Eastwood, a psychologist at the Boredom Lab at York University, Canada. “The first thing is what I would call a ‘desire bind’. That’s when someone is kind of stuck because they desperately want to do something but they don’t want to do anything that’s on offer. Secondly, when you’re bored, your mental capacity is lying fallow. We’re itching to engage our mind. These are the two core things that are what it means to feel bored.”

Boredom is not in itself creative, argues Eastwood, who is the co-author of a new book on boredom called Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom. It’s what it leads to that is important. “When you feel bored, because it’s an aversive and uncomfortable state, you’re motivated to look for something else. In that gap there’s a real chance to discover something new. What matters to me and what am I passionate about? I think that looking can be a source of creativity.”