For families
See the year. Not just the highlights.
“They had a great day.” That's most of what comes home from a forest school — and underneath it, a question you'd never say out loud: is playing in the mud actually school?
Currently piloting with NSEC, Ontario
Grove turns what your child actually did outside into a record you can see, and keep.
Every observation — a photo, a video, or a few written lines — arrives with what was happening, from the teacher who was there. No guessing. No worksheets. Proof the year had shape.
The gap
You asked what they did today.
“Nothing.”
Your child spent the morning building a dam across a creek: negotiating with three other children about where the rocks should go, testing which materials held against the current, celebrating when the water finally pooled behind their wall.
That's engineering, collaboration, scientific thinking, and persistence, all before lunch. But none of it came home with them.
Right now, most of what your child experiences at Forest School stays in the forest. Photos arrive days later, or not at all. Updates come through a jumble of WhatsApp, email, and word-of-mouth. You piece together fragments.
“Make parents see what I am seeing when I post pictures. Not just a cute moment — there was learning here.”
— A Forest School teacher, during Grove's research
The vocabulary for what your child is doing already exists. A creek crossing is risk assessment and negotiation. An argument over the big rock is social-emotional practice. Grove's job is to hand you that vocabulary, one real moment at a time — usually the same day.
What you'll see in Grove
Everything in one place.
No more checking seven apps to piece together your child's day.
Photos with learning context
Every photo includes a short note about what was happening: the skills your child was practising, what they were exploring. A window into their learning, not just a cute picture.
One app for everything
Messages, photos, events, documents, snow-day alerts. If it's from your school, it's in Grove. No more hunting across WhatsApp, email, and a photo app.
Your child's calendar
A personalised calendar of sessions, events, and field trips, with reminders at five days, one day, and day-of. Cancellations notify you instantly.
Session locations
Your child's group sometimes spends the day at a different site. Grove shows where they'll be each day, planned in advance, and where they checked in. No surprises.
Community channels
A dedicated space for parents: carpooling, lost items, kit swaps, event planning. Structured enough to be useful, informal enough to feel like a community.
Secure documents
Permission forms, medical notes, and sensitive documents travel through an encrypted channel, never over WhatsApp or plain email.
The rhythm of the story
Daily moments. Monthly digests. A record every term.
Most days
Field notes as they happen
Observations arrive on your child's feed once a teacher approves them, usually the same day. Grove batches its notifications and never pings you just to boost engagement.
Each month
A digest worth reading
A short, curated recap of your child's month: the standout moments, new skills, and photos you'll actually want to show grandparents. Five minutes, once a month.
Each term
The Grove Record
By term's end, you're not guessing anymore. Curated photos, a narrative grounded in real moments, skills evidence, curriculum connections, and a personal note from the teacher. Term Records are rolling out across the pilot year.
Autumn Term · 2026
Sami's season
in the forest
42 moments · 9 milestones · one story
Sami's season in the forest
p. 12One skill, one term
Risk assessmentWatches the others cross the creek. Stays on the bank.
Crosses holding Ms. Priya's hand, choosing each stone first.
Plans a route, tests it, then talks Theo across.
Assembled from three field notes, September to December.
A page from inside the Record
Growth you can watch happen.
Daily field notes show the moments. Monthly digests show the pattern. The term Record shows the arc: how September's careful watching became December's confident leading, tied in plain language to your province's curriculum. And if your child ever changes schools, the complete record goes with them — ready for the next teacher to pick up where this one left off.
Curated photo gallery. The term's best photos, chosen by the teacher, each with its context.
Written narrative. Built from the teacher's own observations, reviewed and signed by them.
Skills & growth evidence. Collaboration, risk assessment, creativity, independence. Evidence, not scores.
Curriculum connections. A plain-language summary of the provincial curriculum expectations the term touched.
The teacher's personal note. Never AI-written. The human touch that makes it yours.
And the AI? Teachers do all the noticing and all the judgment. The tool saves the retyping at 9 pm — nothing more. How it works →
Does the AI replace the teacher's judgment?
No. The teacher sees the moment, says what happened, and approves every word before you read it — the machine is always third in that order. It never grades, scores, or assesses your child.
The community
A school is also a village.
Gear finds its next kid.
Good gear is the quiet cost of nature school. A proper rain suit, insulated boots, wool layers — hundreds of dollars, outgrown in a season. Some cubbies have all of it; some don't. And nobody enjoys selling a snowsuit to a stranger from Facebook Marketplace.
Grove's buy-sell-trade channel keeps gear circulating inside the community instead. The suit your kid outgrew goes to a family you see at pickup — for a fair price, or for free. Less landfill, less awkwardness, and every child dressed for the weather.
Buy · Sell · Trade
Muddy Buddy rain suit · size 4
Jen R. · Riverdale families · $15
Bogs winter boots · 10T
Priya M. · Free to a good home
Wool base layers · 4–5y, bundle
Marc D. · Trade for size 6, or $20
Visible only to families at your school. No strangers, no shipping.
Local events, organized by you
Skate day at the pond, the harvest potluck, a parent-run whittling workshop. Community events live in the same calendar as school days — planned, RSVP'd, and reminded without a single group text.
Lost & found that actually works
One green mitten, found by the fire pit. Photographed, posted, claimed by morning — instead of spending the winter in a soggy bin nobody checks.
Your child's data
You've wondered where those photos end up.
Who can see them. Whether they train an algorithm. Whether they'll still sit on a server in ten years. With most school apps, you'd be right to wonder. Grove was built so the answers hold up:
Your school's data stays at your school
Grove runs each school on its own isolated database. Your child's photos, messages, and records are never mixed with any other school's.
Canadian servers only
All data is stored in Canada under Canadian privacy law (PIPEDA), and Grove is built to COPPA and provincial childcare requirements. Nothing crosses a border.
No AI training, no third-party APIs
Your child's photos are never sent to outside AI services and never used to train models. A teacher reviews everything the AI drafts before you see it. How the AI works →
Casual content expires
Routine photos, community posts, and messages are designed to expire on a schedule, with time to download what matters. What's curated into the portfolio is kept.
You can take it all and leave
If your child changes schools, export their complete portfolio: every photo, observation, and milestone. No ads, no data sales, nothing held hostage.
A different kind of school.
With evidence to stand on.
Grove is adopted by schools, not individual families. If you'd like your school to use Grove, the fastest route is a note to your director. We've written one you can send as-is.
Opens a pre-written email in your mail app. Edit anything before you send.