What if nature were another teacher in your classroom? What if children spent their days connecting to the rhythms of your local landscape — the redbud blooming on the corner, the scat on the trail behind the building, the worms surfacing after a Tuesday morning rain? What if families chose your program because of its nature-rich experiences?
Early childhood leaders around the world are increasingly drawn to nature-based learning, but shifting an entire program's culture can feel daunting. The good news: it doesn't have to happen all at once. Real change tends to come from small, intentional shifts in how we structure the day, design the environment, plan the curriculum, and support our teams. This post draws from Dr. Rachel Larimore's recent webinar, Reimagining Early Childhood Education to Embrace Nature-Based Learning, offering a framework for thinking through those shifts — and a few concrete possibilities to start dreaming about.
Start with the roots: what nature-based pedagogy actually means
Before reimagining anything, it helps to be clear about what nature-based education really is. At its core, it sits at the intersection of two disciplines:
Early childhood education, with its focus on whole-child development, play, and child-led learning
Environmental education, with its emphasis on place and disrupting the human–nature divide
Where those two overlap — where experiences learning with nature are core to teaching and learning — that's where nature-based programs live.
A few foundational ideas worth grounding in:
Play is non-negotiable. Play is how children learn to solve problems, regulate emotions, see other perspectives, and negotiate differences. It's not a break from learning — it is the learning. There is no worksheet substitute.
Place matters. Nature-based learning isn't a generic curriculum bolted onto the outdoors; it's a deep, specific connection to your corner of the world. The Michigan maple grove. The Texas mesquite scrub. The Chicago courtyard with its surprisingly resilient coyote population. Children develop a sense of belonging when they're invited into relationship with the actual land they live on.
We are nature. It's tempting to think of nature as "somewhere else" — a place you have to drive to. But nature is tucked into planter boxes and bird boxes. It's the squirrel on the fire escape. It's the bird in the airport terminal. Reimagining starts with rethinking what counts as nature in the first place.
Learning in nature vs. learning with nature
This distinction is one of the most useful frameworks in nature-based pedagogy. There are three common modes, and only one of them is truly transformational:
Learning in nature is about location. You take your usual indoor activities and do them outside. Nice, but not transformational.
Learning about nature is about facts and naming — life cycles, bird species, what deer eat. Useful, but teacher-driven.
Learning with nature is relational. The spark comes from the children's experience — the pile of scat on the trail, the caterpillar in their hands, the snow that wasn't there last week. Then that leads to learning about it.
The shift to learning with nature assumes something powerful: nature can provide far more learning than any teacher can plan. In a profession where staffing shortages are the rule rather than the exception, that's not a small thing. Nature can serve as another teacher in the room — one with infinite patience, infinite material, and a deep commitment to seasonal change.
A trail map for change
Shifting a program toward nature-based pedagogy doesn't happen in a single training or a single school year. It tends to follow a predictable arc:
Preparing yourself as a leader
Clarifying why this approach matters for your specific program
Auditing what your program already does through a nature-based lens
Articulating a clear vision and communicating it internally and externally
Identifying small adjustments to current practices
Reimagining administrative and teaching practices to fully embrace nature-based pedagogy
Supporting educators as they bring those practices into daily work
Onboarding new staff into the approach
Most of this post focuses on Step 6 — the reimagining work. But it's worth knowing the full arc, because it's a reminder that wherever you are right now is okay. This isn't about leaping; it's about walking the trail.
"We can't because" → "We might need to"
Here's a rhythm worth carrying into your next staff meeting.
When someone — you, a teacher, a board member — says, What if we were outside the entire class day?, there's almost always a voice that immediately answers: yeah, but…
Yeah, but the bathrooms. Yeah, but the weather. Yeah, but our parents. Yeah, but our schedule.
Try a small reframe: instead of "we can't because," try "we might need to."
We might need to figure out outdoor handwashing. We might need to invest in a class set of rain gear. We might need to adjust our planning schedule. We might need to find a porta-potty solution for our beyond space.
The reframe matters because it moves the conversation from defensiveness to problem-solving. And none of what follows is theoretical — programs around the world are doing each of these things every day. Some U.S. states (including Washington and Michigan) now have licensing rules specifically designed for outdoor and nature-based programs. Canada has extensive resources for fully outdoor programs. The path is mapped.
Reimagining the daily structure
What if children were outside the entire class day?
A few of the practical possibilities to consider:
Meals, snacks, and rest time outdoors. Yes, including hand washing. Yes, including nap, with mats or hammocks off the ground, individual blankets, and shade for hot days.
Stump circles or simple ground circles as outdoor group meeting spaces — a designated spot for community-building, story time, and gathering.
Porches and in-between spaces — including improvised ones like carports, tarps, and shade sails — that let children stay "out in it" even in hard weather without being fully exposed.
A clothing strategy. A class set of rain gear, snow gear, hats, and mittens. A donation pipeline from families. A drying station (one charming, low-cost version: a tree trunk anchored in a planter, with dowel rods drilled in to hang muddy boots).
One important caveat: this isn't about creating little survivalists. The goal is positive outdoor experiences. Going inside to warm up is allowed. Humans invented shelter for a reason.
Reimagining the physical environment
A useful framework here is to think of nature-based programs as having three learning spaces, each with a different relationship to human design:
Space | Designed by | Children's role |
Inside | Mostly adults | At home in a labeled, organized space |
Outside (natural play area) | A blend | More agency, "this is ours" |
Beyond (the world past your fence) | Not by us | Visitors and guests |
Each space invites a different shift:
Inside. Bring your local nature in. Field guides for your birds. Storybooks that reflect your place. Loose parts from the natural world. Houseplants. Story rocks painted with images of local plants and animals. The goal isn't to make the indoors look outdoorsy — it's to keep children connected to the specific place they live.
Outside. Move toward a natural play area — distinct from a traditional climber. The defining feature isn't that it looks natural; it's that the play changes with the seasons. Leaves to play with in fall. Snow to dig in winter. Mud in spring. Vegetation, plants, animals, loose parts. Many states now review natural play areas separately from playground structures, which gives programs more flexibility than they realize. If ripping out the donor-funded climber isn't realistic, start with a zoned natural play area beside it. You don't have to start from scratch.
Beyond. A local park. A courtyard. A camp you partner with. A nature center you visit regularly. Even a stretch of sidewalk where families wave to the same shop owner each week — that's community-building too. Rural programs sometimes have natural beyond spaces on their own land; urban programs often need to be more creative. Both work. The journey to the beyond is part of the learning.
When teams hit roadblocks here — bathrooms, time, funding, dogs, weather — it's worth remembering that the children are almost never the actual barrier. It's the logistics. And logistics have solutions, especially when staff stop treating them as deal-breakers.
Reimagining curriculum and planning
What if curriculum planning emphasized emergent curriculum rooted in the seasons?
A few shifts to consider:
Move from predetermined themes to seasonal themes to fully child-led studies. It's a continuum, not a binary. Most programs land somewhere in the middle, and that's fine.
Shift from mostly teacher-led to mostly free play. This requires internal work — letting go of control isn't easy — but the payoff is real. Children who direct their own play develop deeper problem-solving, longer attention, and richer collaboration skills than children whose days are entirely scheduled.
Get fluent in your local phenology — the cycles of plants, animals, weather, water, and cultural events that shape your specific place. When does the maple syrup festival happen? When do the rivers freeze? When do the redbuds bloom? This is the raw material of an emergent, place-based curriculum.
Practice naming the learning in moments of wonder. When a child finds a caterpillar, you're seeing empathy, self-regulation, fine motor development, language, cooperation, and curiosity all at once. The better you get at naming what's happening, the easier it becomes to plan from those sparks — and to communicate the depth of the learning to families.
That last point is worth lingering on. A lot of nature-based teaching looks, to an outside observer, like "the kids are just playing in the dirt." Educators who can articulate which developmental domains are firing in any given moment are the ones who build family trust, secure funding, and grow programs.
Reimagining your community
A nature-based program isn't just a curriculum — it's a community. Three layers worth attending to:
Your team. Whole-team planning time is rare and precious. Could you release early one day a month? Pay assistants for thirty minutes before or after the day? Reorganize sessions to create a half-day of planning? Don't let "we can't" close the conversation before you've imagined what's possible.
Your families. Buy-in starts before enrollment. Make nature-based learning visible on your website, in your social media, in your handbooks and orientations. Share natural history in newsletters ("the pink flower you're seeing right now is a redbud — here's why it matters"). Host nature-themed family events. Be specific about what "appropriate clothing" means and where to find it. Families who understand the why behind muddy clothes become your strongest advocates.
Local organizations. Nature centers, zoos, farms, camps. Field trips, yes — but also bringing naturalists to you. Many organizations lend artifacts (skull replicas, furs, tools) when children's curiosity sparks a study. These partnerships expand your program's reach without expanding your payroll.
Progress, not perfection
A closing reminder worth holding onto:
This is about progress, not perfection. It's about being intentional in our decisions. Stopping often to reflect on our practices. Knowing that compromises and trade-offs are part of any real change. And remembering why we're doing the things we do — whether that's connection to the outdoors, play, place, or environmental sustainability.
Sometimes you're moving the puddle into the teapot one drip at a time. But every drip adds up. And summer is a good time to dream.
What's one "we can't because" you're ready to turn into "we might need to"?
Want to go deeper on nature-based pedagogy?
Watch Dr. Rachel Larimore's webinars on Nature-Based Learning
Beyond the Fence: Navigating Risk and Safety in Nature-Based Early Learning
Reimagining Early Childhood Education to Embrace Nature-Based Learning
For more resources, books, and on-demand courses from Dr. Larimore, visit Samara Early Learning.
ECI is produced by Playground — the all-in-one child care management platform helping thousands of programs spend less time on admin and more time with kids and families.
