Natural Settings

In Exchange's first online book, Nature Kindergartens and Forest Schools, Scottish author Claire Warden observes:

"There is a fundamental aspect of our human existence that must go back to the times when our ancestors created a place to enclose us but also to be able to look out, to peep, to assess what is going on outside the space we are in. So, it is with children and their families when we go into nature. Almost all the people that we have worked with have remembered a den from their childhood, often kept secret from adults — a space where they had ownership. The sense of shelter is very powerful, especially when it is transferred to a wild space.

"When nature provides the building materials, it is as if everything has a purpose and reason. The branches fall, they are used by flora and fauna (which includes us), and then they return to the earth from whence they came. The cycle works; it is only when we over-design it that it becomes interrupted and disjointed. When engaged in activities in natural settings, such as den building, collecting objects and exploring routes, children are responding to evolutionary psychological desires to connect with place and natural landscapes. The issue in many centres today is that over-designed materials such as pop up tents have taken away some of the thinking, designing, problem-solving skills and most importantly, the affirmation for children of having created something unique."

For more information about Exchange's magazine, books, and other products pertaining to ECE, go to www.ccie.com.

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