Enderby Preschool l Ashton Creek Preschool l Nature Preschool l Farm and Forest Preschool
Teaching Philosophy
Nature-based Outdoor Education
Preschool
The Importance of Nature-based Outdoor Play
Studies show that children benefit in numerous ways from regular time spent immersed in nature engaged in active free play. The outdoors provides opportunities for incidental learning, and an optimal platform for cognitive, social, emotional and physical development. Free play outside improves healthy risk assessment, observation skills, future academic performance, and most importantly: lowers stress and connects children to the natural world. Playing, experimenting, getting creative, and relaxing in nature in all seasons engages the senses of children in many more ways than the indoors can, and has been scientifically shown to benefit children’s development.
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Stem preschool is child-centred and place-based, and the curriculum emerges from the children’s interests and experiences. Your child's teacher uses an inquiry-based teaching style to encourage wonder, curiosity, critical thinking, and observation. Children will build dens, catch bugs, discover evidence of wild animals, garden, observe farm animals, identify plants, and experience the way the seasons change the land. The outdoors naturally provides conditions for children to collaborate, create, build, learn, discover, and develop.
Stem Early Learning Centre promotes Wonder, Curiosity, and Connection in the hearts and minds of the children in care.
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Bushcrafters Course for School-Aged Children
Bushcrafters:
Survival and Nature Studies Course for School-Aged children
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Stem Early Learning Centre is a licensed child care centre offering Bushcrafters classes for children ages 5-7.
Bushcrafters will learn survival skills and engage in nature studies built on observations of the natural world at Stem Early Learning Centre. Each season offers different environments to develop these skills. In the fall, the class will focus on foraging, indigenous uses of plants, the salmon run and salmon life cycle, fishing, archery, fungi, and decomposition. The winter is a great time to learn about tracking, fire building, hibernation and migration, snow shoeing, and winter safety. Spring provides an optimal learning environment to discover the role of pollinators, the water cycle, and growing food. Year-long topics will include safety in the forest, what to do when lost, shelter building, wayfinding, whittling, knots, and basic first aid.
Each class, students will learn a specific skill and have the opportunity to practice that skill that class and in classes going forward. Children will also have the opportunity each class to play freely with friends in the forested play yard. Field trips into the larger forest where the class can explore, discover, and learn together are an important part of the Bushcrafters class.