About Us

Cloudberry Forest School

Our Staff

Nora Trask (co-founder, Program Manager) is the co-founder of Cloudberry Forest School in St. John’s, Newfoundland. After teaching in the traditional school system for many years she gradually started seeing the outdoors as a necessity for the learning process. Starting with designing natural outdoor play spaces, she progressed to incorporating interactions with wilderness into her teaching plans. Nature and play are now intertwined in learning every day at Cloudberry Forest School, Newfoundland’s first outdoor preschool.

Laura Molyneux (co-founder, Program Manager) is a level IV Early Childhood Educator. After spending several years in Family Intervention and Support as well as program development and operation she recognized the importance of true free-play experiences in helping children develop resiliency and self-regulation.

Both Laura and Nora are certified Level 3 Forest School Practitioners and have been

contracted by Forest School Canada to continue to expand the national Forest School

Practitioner’ Course for educators.

Cloudberry Forest School hosted a 5-Day Practitioner’s Course in August of 2017 and

assisted in the professional development of 20 Forest School Practitioners across Canada.

Katie Harrison (Educator, Program Development) is a Primary/Elementary Teacher and Founder of the Summer Camp Echo Pond. She was attracted to Forest School through the idea of the learner centered approach and encouraging children to take charge of their own learning. Katie attended the Forest School Canada Practitioners course

Danielle McGrath (Preschool Educator) is a certified Level II ECE and a recent graduate from the College of the North Atlantic's ECE program. She brings her passion for ECE, the outdoors and animals together at Cloudberry's part-time preschool program.

Our Location

We have a new home!  Cloudberry is proud to be the newest partner of the O'Brien Farm Foundation. The O'Brien Farm Foundation's mandate is to offer place based educational opportunities in farming, sustainability. connections to history and to the land itself and encouraging the community to get outside. We feel that this is the perfect partnership for us! The farm itself is located on O'Brien Farm Road running between Exmouth St and Mt. Scio Road. The property offers 37 acres of dedicated space to share with farmers, fellow educators and the community.

For the fall 2017 semester we will be using the historical Thimble Cottage as our warming station with plans underway to build a dedicated Cloudberry space by the 2018 semesters. In addition to space it also allows us to continue to grow our programs to meet the increasing demand for quality and certified Forest School in the St John's area.

Our Curriculum

Every day is different at Forest School and we are outside rain or shine. There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes! In poor weather we build or find shelters, jump in puddles and embrace what Newfoundland has to offer.

Some experiences that are common at Forest School are shelter building, role playing, team games, outdoor survival (map and compass) and tool use. Each of these activities are guided by an adult to let the children learn at their own comfort and skill level and to truly master the skills.

We follow a child-directed curriculum at Cloudberry. The interests of the children lead the content of the programs. The learning occurs through observation and experience, but common topics of learning build on the natural world and the children's interactions with it. Our leaders facilitate the learning by offering support, materials, resources and supervision to help children succeed in their endeavors.