Category: Consultation

Redefining Play and Connection for Adolescents: Guildford Grammar Year 7 Adventure Playground

In partnership with Guildford Grammar School, Educated by Nature has embarked on an innovative project to bring play back into the lives of Year 7 students through an Adventure Playground. Nestled in the natural area next to the volleyball courts, this space is far from a conventional school plyaground. It’s an evolving, dynamic environment where…
Reflecting on the 2024 Play Matters Collective Summit: Listening to Children’s Voices and Standing Up for the Right to Play

Discover the impact of the 2024 Play Matters Collective Summit in Perth, Western Australia, as we reflect on the significance of play for children and young people. Learn how advocates, educators, and researchers gathered to elevate the importance of children’s right to play, highlighting voices of young people and discussing the role of play in…
Establishing the learning culture at Alam Atelier

In January 2024, Trudi was invited to Jakarta, Indonesia, to train a new group of educators for a brand-new early learning school, Alam Atelier, part of the iSmile network. Being involved at such an early part of the school, before the building was finished, before children were enrolled or the school year started, meant that…
Moerlina’s Bush School

We are living in the age of Nature Deficit Disorder. This term, coined by Richard Louv in Last Child in the Woods (2007), brings focus to the increased disconnection between children and nature. It warns us of the impacts this can have our children and society. Over the last few years, at our family and…
Consulting with Kwoorabup Nature School

When Kwoorabup Nature School in Denmark, on the south west coast of Western Australia, invited us to consult with them for just over a week, we were both excited and daunted. Each class in this amazing school already spends a whole day outside every week, known as Walkabout Day. They have a magnificent karri forest…
Children & Nature Network 2023 Conference Reflection

As the Children and Nature conference for 2023 comes to a close, it’s time to reflect on the lessons learned and how they can be integrated into our Educated by Nature programs, and the organisation as a whole. So what were the standout thoughts from the conference? For me, the following themes emerged. The inclusion…
Greening Schoolyards Colorado

As a precursor to the Children and Nature Network – Inside Out 2023 Conference in Colorado, Fay and Daniel boarded a bus to check out some schools that had been transformed under the Greening schoolyards program across Denver. Fresh from their time at the International Play Conference in Glasgow (and visits to some wonderful play…
Challenging the Senses at Bush School

A return to the old boat shed space, with a difference! Presented with the provocation of being early settlers on their way to Western Australia, the year 4 students at Guildford Grammar found themselves confronted by a new land and new experiences at Bush School today. We asked the students to imagine they were getting…
When Maths Appears in the Caring Task of Weeding

Under a small stand of Karri and Marri trees, positioned between the road and the school carpark, a group of year 3 and 4 students are snipping Watsonia stems and collecting the seeds (cormels) into a bucket. Watsonia is a weed here and covers this small patch of bush, smothering many of the smaller native…
When We Find Comfort in Nature – A Class Story

Blog by Tamara Johnston and Trudi Bennett The Children in Nature Network (started by Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods) is celebrating 15 years of the children in nature movement. Richard Louv introduced the world to the term Nature-Deficit Disorder. “Nature-deficit disorder describes the human cost of alienation from nature, among them;…