About Chelsea Forest School 

Here are some things to know about us:

Our school has roots reaching all the way back to 1964 when a group of enthusiastic parents founded Chelsea Cooperative Nursery School to provide a preschool for four-year-olds. Chelsea Forest School is that same organization today, operating continuously for more than 60 years. The name change accompanied the school's full embrace of forest school pedagogy in 2013.
 

We have since becoming one of the largest and longest-running forest schools in Canada. Over the 2025-26 school year, we enrolled 74 students from 60 member-families, and welcomed about the same number of families to our introductory and seasonal programs.

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The real business of CFS happens mostly in a wonderful patch of nature in Chelsea, QC, on land on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg. Our days begin and end in our upper and lower Home Base areas. From there, intrepid young explorers venture off to places like maple forest and deer forest, and sandy beach (which becomes snowy beach in winter), and the rugged snowy mountains that rise up from Meredith Centre zamboni's waste. These become important places in the worlds of the students. Parents, you will hear so many wonderful stories. ​

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We are lucky to have a great team of forest school educators to lead the way. Our longtime teaching director Michelle Hegge was among the first certified Level 3 Forest School Practitioners in Canada, and Christine Mattimoe has been teaching with us for eight years! All of our teachers have specialized training or experience, including current first aid and CPR.
 

Family participation is integral to our ethos. We invite a "duty parent" into each and every one of our preschool classes. Frogs families have duty days about once every six weeks; Dragonflies and Foxes families about once every three months. Parents of Coyotes and Wolves are invited to join a class at least once per year. These are special days for parents and children alike. 

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Member families contribute to the school financially through a $250 annual membership fee and tuition fees (~$3150), and sometimes so generously through donations. CFS recently established an endowment with initial capital of $15,000, which we hope to grow, and proceeds from which will support the school. Each family is also required to contribute 10 hours of volunteer time to school life or pay an additional $250 opt-out fee.