The Daily Dirt – Child Educational Center

The Daily Dirt
Your source of real-world inspiration and practical tips on sharing the daily wonders of the natural world with young children in our care.

[Photo credit: Child Educational Center]

[Photo credit: Child Educational Center]

At the Child Educational Center in La Cañada, California, we have nature-filled environments for children to engage in. This has been an intentional decision from the very beginning. Our founding directors knew even then how important nature is in the lives of young children. It has been our work since we opened to continue to create nature-filled spaces for children and adults both indoors and out. We consider the Outdoor Classrooms to be as integral to their learning as the indoor spaces. We set up invitations and provocations and places for children to explore, discover, and wonder. Children have freedom of movement between the indoors and the outdoors. There is no “recess” time. They can spend their day fully indoors, fully outdoors, or anything in between. The more interested and engaged in their experiences, the more learning will happen. Sometimes, children know best.

Tips from Child Educational Center

Fill your space with nature. Grow vegetables and flowers in gardens or containers. Growing plants encourages other kinds of nature to make their home in your outdoor space. You will find birds fluttering around the flowers. Bugs, like praying mantis, lady bugs, and grasshoppers will be frequent visitors for children to observe, investigate, and document. Also have a robust collection of natural loose parts such as logs, sticks, pinecones, branches, bamboo, rocks, shells, and more! These materials get used the most in our spaces because of the flexibility they afford children. These natural elements can become anything the child imagines!
Give children the opportunity to do their own thinking. It is easy to respond to children’s questions by giving them the answer but when we do this we actually take away their opportunity for deeper learner. Give them space and time to puzzle things out, try solutions, and to see what works and what doesn’t. The real learning is in the process, whether they ever find a solution that works or not. Give yourself over to their process.

Learn more about Child Educational Center and other Certified Nature Explore Outdoor Classrooms: certified.natureexplore.org/child-educational-center

Ellen Veselack

Ellen Veselack is the Co-Executive Director for the Child Educational Center. Additionally, she is a consultant and trainer for the Outdoor Classroom Project, and she leads the research division at the CEC where she does qualitative research on the developmental benefits of the outdoor classroom on children’s growth and development.