A written account of what a child did outside and why it counted, from the teacher who was there. For the teachers who noticed it, the schools that stand behind it, and the parents who need to see it.
Piloting with NSEC, Ontario.
Tuesday · 22 September
Sami is at Cedar Class today.
At Maple Grove · since 9:02
Drizzling at the creek. Puddle-boots day.
Needs you2
RSVP needed — Harvest Festival, Friday
Reply before Thursday morning
Someone found Sami's water bottle
Lost & found · reply from Beatriz
Recent storiesSee all →
Sami sorted twelve pinecones by size, then by weight. The order changed.
›
Sami lit the fire striker on his own for the first time.
›A parent's view. Tap around.
An intro
Every morning a class walks into the woods and comes back muddier, tired, and further along than they left. It looks like play. It is a school day.
Their teacher sees all of it: the one who finally shared the saw, the one who read the sky and called the rain. She has always seen it. She has never had a way to bring it home.
Grove is how she does. A photo, a sentence spoken on the trail, and the story lands in a parent’s pocket before pickup, in her words, with her name on it.
For a parent, it is the difference between “fine” and a child explaining at dinner how a fire wants air. For the child, it is a season they can hold in their hands and say: I did this.
The gap
9:40 am · Maple Grove creek
Flat ones first, then the round ones that kept rolling off. Each time the current pushed a stone loose, the design changed. By the end the water pooled behind a wall two courses high.
How a parent sees it
12:41. Ana is at her desk. Her phone buzzes.
Stories
Theo · Maple Grove Forest School
Last week
GROVEnowMs. Priya shared a story about TheoA dam across a creek. Forty minutes testing which rocks hold.
Tue, 22 Sep · Maple Grove creek · Ms. Priya
A short story
The dam held. He tested every rock first.
“The small one is heavier. It’s wet, that’s why.”
— Theo, to the group, about twenty minutes in
Theo spent most of the morning at the creek bend, testing rocks. Flat ones first, then the round ones that kept rolling off. Each time the current pushed a stone loose, he changed the design rather than the rock.
When Sami asked why the big one went underneath, he showed her instead of telling her: pushed a flat stone under the flow and let her watch the water go over it. By the end the pool behind the wall was two courses deep.
He lost a boot to the mud with one course to go. Sock soaked, foot cold, he finished the wall before he would let anyone help him get it back on.
A few things Ms. Priya noticed
Tested each rock before placing it, and changed the design when one failed.
Forty minutes on one self-set task, through a lost boot.
Marcus read this at 12:58.
Send to Marcus
10:15 am · the fallen cedar
Ada found the tracks first and decided they were a fox’s. By the time the group caught up she had a name for it, a reason it was running, and a place it was going. When Mira asked what happened next, she thought for a moment and gave the fox a den.
Draft story · Ada
The tracking guide, open to Canidae1 photo · attached11:05 am · the clearing
Mira noticed the creek mud was grey and the path mud was red. She mixed them on a flat stump, crushed leaves in for green, and painted a stripe of each on birch bark. Then she named them: rain colour, boot colour, Tuesday.
None of it came home. Not because it didn't happen, but because nothing survived the day to be shown.
Grove sends it home while the mud is still on their hands.
Draft story · Mira
“Boot coloured”, painted on paper1 photo · attachedOne school day
Pick a seat and watch the day unfold. A fever reported before breakfast, a tap at the gate, a story that lands while the boots are still wet, and a file that is ready when the Ministry asks.
11:40
Six children, one thermometer.
A story about Ada · 11:40The thermometer said eleven. They checked it three times.
8:52
Doors open. Mira is last through the gate.
Right now
9 children10 children
with 2 adults
One adult to every 4.5 children.One adult to every 5 children.
9:00
Circle. The day gets its shape.
Day rhythm · Cedar Class
Weather · Maple Grove
9° and grey. Rain after 1.
Fire circle is a maybe. Rain suits on for the walk back.
11:58
Lunch. A dose is due.
Med log · today
Give dose
Sami R.
Cetirizine · 1 tab
Second signature
Controlled doses need two staff. Mr. Dale is being asked…signed · 12:02
12:14
Twenty-three seconds become a story.
“Sami lined up twelve pinecones smallest to biggest, then weighed them in his hands and — and re-did the whole line. Said the wet ones cheat.”
7:10
Sami has a fever. Two taps and a line.
Let the teachers know about Sami.
A few words, sent once. Nothing you write here is graded.
What’s the reason
A note, if you want · optional
When back
11:20
The class moves. You can see where.
12:41
Ana is at her desk. Her phone buzzes.
GROVEnowMs. Priya shared a story about SamiTwelve pinecones, two different orders.Tue, 22 Sep · Maple Grove creek · Ms. Priya
Twelve pinecones, two different orders.
“The small one is heavier. It’s wet, that’s why.”
Sami lined up twelve pinecones from smallest to biggest, then rebuilt the line by weight. The two orders didn’t match, and he worked out why.
Reply to Ms. Priya · under the story
3:05
Twenty-five minutes to pickup.
Pickup today
Late pickup · logged
Theo B. · expected 4:40 · Marcus · with Ms. Priya’s okay. No fee under 15 minutes.
Friday
A letter arrives at Nana’s.
Friday · a letter about the week
The week Sami counted everything
Dear Nana, this was a counting week. Sami sorted twelve pinecones two ways on Tuesday, and lost a boot to the mud with one course to go. He finished the wall before he’d let anyone help.
Read the whole letter →
Thursday · one line from Ms. Priya
Sami counted the class in by twos at circle, and was right.
A new line arrives each afternoon around 4.
2:00
Everyone is asleep. Your database backs itself up.
What never happens here
9:30
The inspector is at the door. The file is already open.
Audit log · this morning
Nothing was assembled for the visit.
The record was already the day, written as it happened.
4:15
Ada’s family changed their mind about photos.
Takes effect now
Sept 1
A new year. Nothing is retyped.
Returning
35
New families
6
Moving on
3
Billing · September
41 invoices
sent on the 1st, automatically
Collecting…36 paid · 5 on a plan · 0 chased by hand
Coverage · first week
Two teachers per class every day. One gap on Thursday, already covered by Mr. Dale.
Every school
is its own grove.
Policies get rewritten. These are built in.
One school, one database
Each school runs on its own database, separate from every other school’s. A breach somewhere else can’t touch your families.
Stored in Canada
Under PIPEDA, built to COPPA and provincial childcare requirements. No AI training. No ads, no data sales. Grove sells software to schools; that is the whole business.
7:10 am. Sami has a fever. Two taps and a line; a minute later it’s on the teacher’s roll. Nobody asks you to explain.
How it works
A teacher already knows what she saw. The cost was never the noticing; it was turning a full day outside into sentences after the day was over, in the driveway or at the kitchen table, unpaid and invisible. The same moment retyped three ways: for the feed, for a worried parent, for her own records.
So Grove asks for the part only she can do, and takes the retyping. About thirty seconds in the field per moment, a few minutes at lunch to review, and she is done when the day is done. The hours that used to go to write-ups go back to the children, or back to her. Her judgment was never what slowed this down. The time to write it up was.
9:40 am · the pond
Noor has been at the pond edge for twenty minutes with Friday’s jar, counting which tadpoles have changed. Ms. Priya has watched the whole thing and knows exactly what it means. Her hands are wet and there are eleven other children.
Time cost
Nothing yet. The noticing was always free. What used to cost the evening was everything that came after.
9:41 am · same pond
One photo, then twenty seconds of voice. Her words, not a form: what she noticed and why it mattered, while it is still in front of her. Hands free again in half a minute.
Time cost
About thirty seconds. No typing with wet thumbs, no note to remember later.
12:41 pm · staff room
Grove turns her voice into two readable sentences and suggests the skills the moment might show. It works only from what she captured and never invents a detail. She fixes a word, removes a tag she disagrees with, and approves. The AI has no publish button.
What the skills mean
Educators have always known that counting tadpoles is science and that finding the word for it is language. Grove keeps a map of how outdoor moments connect to skills and to each province’s early-learning expectations. A suggestion is a match from that map; she confirms or removes it. Over a term, the confirmed moments become evidence of growth. Never a score, never a rank.
6:20 pm · Ana’s kitchen
The story reaches the family the same day, with the skills attached in plain words. Tonight the answer to “what did you do today” has a photo, a jar, and the word “metamorphosis”.
The lines we don’t cross
No photo of a child is ever sent to an outside AI company.
Nothing trains on your children. Not our models, not anyone’s.
A teacher reads every word before a family does.
Nothing in Grove grades, ranks or compares a child.
FAQ
How Grove works, who writes what, where a child’s photos live, and what you keep when you leave.
No. Grove never scores, ranks or grades a child. An observation names what the child did and which skills the moment might show. The teacher decides what is said, and can edit or delete it.
The teacher notices and says it. Grove turns a photo or a few spoken words into a written draft. Nothing reaches a family until the teacher has read it, fixed what needs fixing and approved it. How the AI works.
Forest and nature schools first, in Canada. Pilot schools are onboarding now; if that sounds like you, book a demo and we will talk about your program.
Grove sells software to schools; families never pay. Pilot schools in Canada are onboarding now, and pricing will be announced in spring 2027. Book a demo to talk about your school.
Yes. Teachers capture on the phone with no signal at all. It saves locally and syncs when the phone finds a network, usually on the walk back.
About thirty seconds in the field per moment, and a few minutes at lunch to review. The write-up that used to happen in the driveway or at the kitchen table no longer does.
About a week. We import the roster, set up classes and staff, and walk the team through capture and review. Families join with a code from the school.
Yes. Presence, absences, medication logs, consent per child and compliance exports are all part of Grove, so the day is written down once, as it happens.
On a database that belongs to your school alone, in Canada, under PIPEDA and provincial childcare rules. Only staff at your school and the families of the children in a photo can see it. Nothing is sold, shown ads against, or used to train an AI model.
No. No child’s photo goes to a third-party model, and nothing a school captures is used to train one. The AI drafts from what the teacher gives it, and the teacher keeps the last word.
Families can export everything at any time: full-resolution photos, a printable PDF of every observation, and the comments. Routine content expires on a schedule; the Record is yours to keep.
A note from the founder
“I built Grove because I'm a forest school parent. I kept asking my son what he did all day in the woods, and the answer deserved better than ‘nothing.’”
Running a school?
Onboarding a small group of Canadian pilot schools. Pricing announced spring 2027.
Book a demoAt a school that uses Grove?
Free for families at pilot schools. Sign in with the account your school set up.