Facilitating Young Children’s Learning with Nature

Nature-based education seems to be all the rage lately. This includes nature-based preschools, forest preschools, and nature-based elementary programs. While the number of immersive nature-based programs is increasing, there are thousands of more traditional programs that have the opportunity to meaningfully integrate nature into their early childhood program. This edWebinar will help early childhood providers, no matter their situation, consider the principles fundamental to a nature-based approach and integrate those principles into teaching practice.

This edWebinar will particularly focus on the teacher-child interactions that best support children learning with nature rather than simply learning in or about nature. This approach doesn’t happen overnight, but rather occurs through daily programmatic and teaching decisions. Rachel Larimore will provide concrete ways to integrate high-quality nature-based early childhood education practices into the classroom inside, outside, and beyond the fence of the play area. The edWebinar will include discussion around modeling and facilitating for children, questioning, when to use silence as a pedagogical tool, and how to support developmentally appropriate risky play. Attendees will leave this edWebinar with tangible ideas that can be implemented the next day as well as some ideas that can be worked toward in the future.

This edWebinar will be of benefit to preK through elementary school teachers, librarians, and school and district leaders. There will be time for questions at the end of the presentation.

About the Presenter

Rachel Larimore is an educator, speaker, consultant, and author of the books Establishing a Nature-Based Preschool and Preschool Beyond Walls: Blending Early Childhood Education and Nature-Based Learning. She is also the founder of Samara Early Learning (SEL)—a consulting business focused on supporting nature-based early childhood professionals. Her passion and expertise lie around the intentional integration of nature into early childhood education for young children’s whole development. Prior to establishing SEL, Rachel founded the nature-based preschool at Chippewa Nature Center (CNC) in Midland, MI. She continued as the founding director until 2016 when, at her departure, the program served 140 children each year through public and private funding sources. While at CNC, Rachel also led the creation of a partnership with Bullock Creek Public Schools to create a nature-based kindergarten and first grade. Rachel is also a doctoral candidate in education at Michigan State University. For more about Rachel, visit https://www.samarael.com/.