By Monica Pallett
“What we have loved, others will
love, and we will teach them how”
William
Wordsworth
At The Little School, we are continuously expanding and
refining our outdoor and nature-based learning. We start introducing TLS kids to the wonders of nature early
on – letting our youngest explorers play in the dirt and seek out what is of
interest to them as soon as they are able to crawl. We know that regular time out in nature is good for people
of all ages. A growing body of
research shows that we need to be in natural settings regularly to be optimally
healthy – both mentally and physically.
There is ample evidence that time out in wild spaces significantly reduces
stress levels in children and adults.
In fact, the denser the tree canopy the greater the drop in our cortisol
levels. Children are more
cooperative, happy and engaged when out in natural environments; and children
with behavioral or attentional challenges experience far fewer symptoms in
natural settings.
There is also another set of benefits from regular fun
exposure to natural habitats. Positive
direct experience in the out-of-doors and being taken outdoors by someone close
to the child—a parent, grandparent, or a trusted teacher or friend—are the two
factors that most contribute to individuals choosing to take action to benefit
the environment as adults. At
The Little School we do many things to ensure our children to develop a direct
and positive relationship with nature.
Children are taken on hikes in the woods regularly where we climb trees
and play in the creeks. As they
grow with us here at The Little School we will help them to understand how we
can help care for the earth. We
have begun to partner with community groups to do engaging projects which teach
core conservation principles in a child-friendly way.
Tom Driscoll, a retired EPA scientist and lifelong birder, came to both
campuses and talked to all of our Pre-K classes about two kinds of birds we can
help by putting up bird houses.
Through his leadership role with The Audubon Society, he was able to get
us bird houses for brown-headed nuthatches and blue birds to put up in the
woods nearby and around the school grounds. In exchange for these birdhouses, our preschoolers are
becoming citizen scientists as we go out and check the birdhouses for nesting
and hatching activity and record this activity in a national database. Our preschoolers learned that
brown-headed nuthatches rely on the holes made in trees by woodpeckers, and if
there aren’t enough of these holes they need us to help them out by putting up
birdhouses on pine trees.
A Duke parent and environmental educator from The Nicholas School for
the Environment organized a field trip to a nearby creek which has been
restored by Duke. She brought
along an Enviroscape watershed model and a story book, All the Way to the
Ocean, to demonstrate how things like litter, fertilizer, mud and motor oil
find their way into our creeks.
From our creeks things flow to rivers and lakes and eventually all the
way to the sea. At both campuses
once the weather warms up we will be measuring the health of the creeks by
looking for macroinvertebrates (creek bugs) under rocks and on the water
surface. Our outdoor learning educators,
Monica, Cole and Erin, recently attended a Project Wet two-day training class
to learn all about this and other fun ways to teach our kids about the
importance of our nearby creeks.
One of the main lessons we want to teach again and again is how
interconnected natural systems are and that we are a part of these systems. All of our pre-K classrooms now have
worm bins which are a great way to teach this principle. A group of 6 teachers all learned how
to make a worm bin while making their classrooms worm bin at a recent workshop
put on for us here at TLS by Murial Willman with Orange County Solid Waste
Management. The kids feed their
worms leftover fruit from snack and then the worms make the best fertilizer
known to man. We will use this
compost to grow seedlings for our very own gardens which place food on our
lunch tables – the circle of life just keeps on turning here at TLS.
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