COME JOIN US FOR FOREST SCHOOL IN THE SUBURBAN WILDERNESS!
LOCATED IN GREAT FALLS-ARLINGTON-MCLEAN, VIRGINIA
Come join us for a fabulous time in the Suburban Wilderness. We are in Northern Virginia for the summer and are offering Forest School at a variety of trail meet up locations including Great Falls, Mclean, and Arlington.
We offer a small program for 4-15 children led by Andrew and Rebecca and supported by youth mentors for our larger groups. Our groups are more often small and intimate with just 4-8 children of mixed ages.
Our program is unique in this way, and with such a mall group size we have the ability to tailor the session to the needs and interests of the group and really support each child.
We have over 30 years of experience hiking and leading suburban wilderness programs with children as well as teaching preschool, kindergarten and a mixed age homeschool programs.
We are highly skilled at supporting children of all temperaments in experiencing deep engagement with the natural world with adventure, safety, joy, and mindful relating.
“If we want children to flourish, we need to give them time to connect with nature and love the Earth before we ask them to save it” – David Sobel
It’s all about connection and empathy. Our approach is to nurture empathy and a love for the natural world, creating ripe conditions for transformative experiences.
During early childhood, especially between 2-7 years of age, children’s deep relationship with nature and growing love happens in their yards, close to home and close to much loved places.
It is there in the crack of the sidewalk, by a favorite tree, or the chipmunk hole under the building that children develop their first foundational love with the earth. Author and Teacher, David Sobel [2008] believes “one transcendent experience in the landscape may have the potential for leading to a thousand nature facts.”
By observing children in nature across cultures, Sobel [2008] has identified 7 play motifs that are universal to children’s play in nature; making forts and special places, playing hunting and gathering games, shaping small worlds, developing friendships with animals, constructing adventures, descending into fantasies, and following paths and figuring out shortcuts [SOBEL 2008]
From 30 years of exploring nature with children, these play motifs have been evident, in every play, every day as we play in the backyard, or off on a longer expedition. This play does not need the perfect wilderness, or hike, or large expanse. I have taught and mentored in urban environments where our semi-wild spaces were next to sidewalks or lots. Deep nature connection can happen anywhere.
The overarching theme during this time is building connections and love with the earth, developing relationships and most of all empathy.
Young children are wired for empathy, Sobel says, “Early childhood is characterized by a lack of differentiation between the self and the other. Children feel implicitly drawn to baby animals; a child feels pain when someone else scrapes her knee. Rather than force separateness, we want to cultivate that sense of connectedness so that it can become the emotional foundation for the more abstract ecological concept that everything is connected to everything else.”