The outdoors is full of rich learning experiences for preschool and pre-kindergarten children. Lens on Outdoor Learning is filled with stories and colorful photographs that illustrate how the outdoors supports children's early learning. Each story is connected to an early learning standard such as curiosity and initiative; engagement and persistence; imagination, invention, and creativity; reasoning and problem-solving; risk-taking, responsibility, and confidence; reflection, application, and interpretation; and flexibility and resilience. Much of the teaching in these experiences is indirect and involves provisioning, observing, and conversing with children as they spend quality time in nature. Children's dialogue and actions are included in each story to show just how engaged they became during these experiences. Lens on Outdoor Learning will inspire early childhood professionals to use this outdoor approach in their own setting. Wendy Banning is coordinator of Irvin Learning Farm, an inquiry-based, hands-on outdoor learning space for children and adults in North Carolina. She is also an educational consultant, teacher, trainer, and photographer. Ginny Sullivan is co-principal of Learning by the Yard, a partnership of landscape architects and educators that helps schools develop their grounds as habitat, focusing on native plants. Ginny consults, trains teachers, and involves schools and centers in the design of their outdoor spaces to help children learn about the natural world.

Enhance children's early learning and help them reconnect with the natural world with these high-quality outdoor learning experiences.

"This book helps educators who use the outdoors as a learning setting. It presents teaching methods for people who teach in schools, nature centers, adventure centers, camps, environmental learning centers, government agencies, and universities. These methods apply to many subject areas such as physical education, science education, environmental studies, and recreation"--

“A magnificent resource for transforming backyards into stimulating environments which enhance children’s creativity, learning, and fun.” —Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, The Nature Principle, and Vitamin N Access to technology has created a generation of children who are more plugged in than ever before—often with negative consequences. But there is a solution. Unrestricted outdoor play helps reduce stress, improve health, and enhance creativity, learning, and attention span. In Nature Play at Home, Nancy Striniste gives you the tools you need to make outdoor adventures possible in your own backyard. With hundreds of inspiring ideas and illustrated, step-by-step projects, this hardworking book details how to create playspaces that use natural materials—like logs, boulders, sand, water, and plants of all kinds. Projects include hillside slides, seating circles, sand pits, and more.

Teaching Off Trail describes the transformation of Peter Dargatz, a national board-certified teacher, and public school coordinator, from an anxious assessor to a fair and fun facilitator of learning. It shares his personal professional journey detailing his evolution as an educator while simultaneously offering strategies for readers to implement Peter's unique teaching philosophy to increase opportunities for play, creative expression, and personalization in both the indoor and outdoor classroom. In his own classroom, Peter brought learning outside by creating a nature kindergarten program that emphasizes community partnerships, service learning, and meaningful and memorable experiences in the outdoors. Teaching Off Trail aims to inspire educators, administrators, and parents across all levels to turn their outrage for today’s educational system into outreach that promotes passionate and purposeful problem-solving. He incorporates techniques often seen in private educational settings like Reggio and Montessori—student-centered, self-directed experiential approaches to learning) and shows how they work within a public school system.

Connect nature play, outdoor experiences, and STEM learning with activities, real-life examples, and educator resources

This Open Access book examines children’s participation in dialectical reciprocity with place-based institutional practices by presenting empirical research from Australia, Brazil, China, Poland, Norway and Wales. Underpinned by cultural-historical theory, the analysis reveals how outdoors and nature form unique conditions for children's play, formal and informal learning and cultural formation. The analysis also surfaces how inequalities exist in societies and communities, which often limit and constrain families' and children's access to and participation in outdoor spaces and nature. The findings highlight how institutional practices are shaped by pedagogical content, teachers' training, institutional regulations and societal perceptions of nature, children and suitable, sustainable education for young children. Due to crises, such as climate change and the recent pandemic, specific focus on the outdoors and nature in cultural formation is timely for the cultural-historical theoretical tradition. In doing so, the book provides empirical and theoretical support for policy makers, researchers, educators and families to enhance, increase and sustain outdoor and nature education.

The Changing World of Outdoor Learning in Europe sets out to provide a comprehensive analysis of the economical and political changes that have occurred in European outdoor culture in the preceding two decades, from a diverse range of perspectives including institutional, theoretical, national and educational views. The book looks at how outdoor education has been transformed into an increasingly global field where established and influenced practices have been introduced into modernising and democratising nations. With contributions from the members of the board of the European Institute of Outdoor Adventure Eduation and Experiential Learning and representatives of the networks that stand behind it, this unique book provides thorough factual analyses and examinations of outdoor learning that have never been presented before. The book contains contributions from across Europe, with authors from the UK, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Slovenia, Poland, Norway and the Czech Republic. Chapters within the volume by non - European authors provide another perspective on the European story in a wider context. As a whole, the book will stimulate the ongoing debate about the nature, function and organisation of outdoor education around the globe. The Changing World of Outdoor Learning in Europe will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of outdoor education, leadership and recreation; and outdoor, sport, environmental and leisure studies. It should also be essential reading for those involved in outdoor organisations in Europe and worldwide.

Nature-based preschools are powerful programs that fuse early childhood and environmental education to develop a child's lifelong connection with the natural world. With the number of this unique, cutting-edge program growing throughout the country, many nature centers are asking, "Is a nature-based preschool right for us?" Establishing a Nature-Based Preschool helps answer that question, and provides a how-to guide to move from concept to implementation.