Getting Wild Helps Shape Kids Worldview

Sunday, October 11, 2015 Getting Wild Helps Shape Kids Worldview Exploring nature provides children with many learning opportunities enriching their lives and giving them a deep foundation of their sense of self and the world around them. The lives of children today are much different having few opportunities for outdoor free play and regular contact with the natural world. Their physical boundaries have shrunk due to a number of factors. There are fewer opportunities to explore the natural world and its playing field. Our technological world has taken over the minds of our children that once played outside shifting the focus to a culture that imprisons as a result inhibiting a child’s opportunity for spontaneous contact with the most natural playground being nature. Loris Malaguzzi an educational teacher who became the inspiration behind the educational experiences in Reggio Emilia is quoted as saying, “All of this is a great forest. Inside the forest is the child. The forest is beautiful, fascinating, green, and full of hope; there are no paths. Although it isn’t easy, we have to make our own paths, as teachers and children and families, in the forest. Sometimes we find ourselves together within the forest, sometimes we may get lost from each other, sometimes we’ll greet each other from far away across the forest; but its living together in the forest that is important. And this living together in not easy.” Loris Malaguzzi I see the forest as being a meaningful teacher where learning can take place providing a world of opportunity for children to co-exist with and in nature. The learning and the Dialogue that exist when children play outdoors is a partnership that allows children to develop a language with nature that leads them to further grow and make sense out of life. This form of joint venture that transpires has no boundaries as children get lost in a world of their own requiring no direction from adults but taking on their own leads and building theories about nature and what their part in its co-existence is. There is a new approach to nature-based education, this new movement offers us a small glimpse of what childhood used to be and can still be. And so there we have it, more and more educators and families are learning that nature has a purpose in learning and child development, building a sense of self and identify and meaningful living. The fall months especially offer a kaleidoscope of beauty in which we can with our children partake of natures secrets, take your children outside and let them experience the world and its beautiful bounty and watch as nature becomes your child’s teacher. “creativity seems to emerge from multiple experiences, coupled with a well-supported development of personal resources, including a sense of freedom to venture beyond the known” (Malaguzzi, 1998, p. 76). Learning in and with nature, is venturing beyond the known. It leads us to forge a path of possibilities, but as Malaguzzi suggests in the opening quote, we have to make our own paths, as teachers and children and families, in the forest.

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