Nature Education

“Childhood has its own way of seeing, thinking and feeling and nothing is more foolish than to try to substitute ours for theirs.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (Emile)

Home Sweet Home Preschool is committed to providing children with Nature Education. Nowhere is this more observable than in the parent-teacher-partnership-created gardens and naturescapes accessible to children for over 5 hours daily on the playground. Potential interactions include exploration of bark, grass, sand, water and varied plants and the animals and insects they attract. Adults and youth observe children's wonder and discovery as they choose to engage with these many opportunities.

A beautiful example of child-initiated, adult-framed project work was the Green Activity facilitated by Kris Palmer (Katy's mom) with small groups of children on March 1, 2012. After children had weeks of exploring the carpentry project and wondering about what would be added in, Kris responded to our new parent-designed and created planter with bags of soil and lettuces to plant. She and Teacher Dan engaged groups of 6-8 children with the hard work of moving supplies and planting vegetables, and then tending to the Big Garden while encouraging discussion. Kris is only one of the Home Sweet Home parents who donates hours of her interest and expertise to ensuring our access to Nature Education.

During early childhood, the main objective of environmental education should be the development of empathy between the child and the natural world. In addition to regular opportunities to explore and play in nature, one of the best ways to foster empathy with young children is to cultivate relationships to animals. This includes exposure to indigenous animals, both real and imagined (Sobel 1996). Children interact instinctively and naturally with animals, talk to them, and invest in them emotionally. A little-known fact about children and animals is that studies of the dreams of children younger than age 6 reveal that as many as 90% of their dreams are about animals (Acuff 1997; Patterson 2000). Children’s exposure to relationships with animals needs to be cultivated with live animal contact and animal-based stories, songs and other experiences. Developing an emotional connectiveness—empathy—to the natural world is the essential foundation for the later stages of environmental education (Sobel 1996 & 2008).

Children experience the natural environment differently than adults. Adults usually see nature as background for what they are doing, as a visual, aesthetic experience. Children experience nature holistically. It is not merely a background to their events, but rather as a provocation to and experiential component of their activities. Children judge nature not by its asesthetics, but rather by the manner of their interactions and sensory experiences with it. (White and Stoecklin, 2008) That is why children have more love for a mud puddle than for formal, sculpted grounds, even if adults may feel the reverse.

Biophilia = "love of nature" Children have an innate, genetically predisposed tendency to explore and bond with the natural world. For children’s natural inclination of biophilia to develop they must be given developmentally appropriate opportunities to learn about the natural world based on sound principles of child development and learning. If children’s natural attraction to nature is not given opportunities to flourish during their early years, biophobia, an aversion to nature may develop. Biophobia ranges from discomfort and fear in natural places to contempt for whatever is not man-made or adult-managed - such a child would fare poorly at summer camp, and may have a lifelong addiction to air-conditioning. More critically, biophobia may also manifest in the regard of nature as nothing more than a disposable resource.

HOME-TO-SCHOOL CONNECTION Home Sweet Home grows in its commitment to children's Nature Education through planning with families to ensure that these authentic, hands-on experience are respected as foundational learning. Parents are encouraged to photograph their child as they engage authentically with nature. Please help your child print their first name on a 6" to 8" piece of paper and paste their photo to it. This can be brought in and displayed on the yellow flowered bulletin board by March 29!