NATURE CONNECTION MENTORING TRAINING
LEARN TO CREATE WILD EXPERIENCES FOR KIDS IN YOUR LOCAL ‘OUTBACK’.
Our in-person or online training will provide you with the confidence to share your local wild places with children and young people.
Whether you’re an early childhood educator, primary school teacher, parent, or carer – our courses will enable you to mentor children and young people to feel at home in the natural environment. But just as importantly, you also get to learn about and embrace your own unique local landscape – both inner and outer! – in order to share this love of place with children, your community, and beyond.
We know that there are rising levels of anxiety, stress, depression, ADHD, and poor physical strength in children.* We also know that time in nature is an excellent antidote.**
Are you ready to be a part of the nature play movement?
NATURE PLAY MENTOR TRAINING
Our in-person or online training provides interactive experiential learning and guided reflection to give you the skills necessary to mentor children and young people in the natural environment. The journey begins with a personal “re-wilding” to help you build your confidence and connection with both your inner and your outer local landscapes.
You are then guided to move out into your local terrain to learn its special secrets. Finally, we bring it all together to offer a solid toolbox of pedagogies and strategies, and more sector specific applications of nature play.
Throughout the course, you have the opportunity to not only rebuild your sense of awe and wonder for the natural world around you, but to learn specific skills that will help you share this love with children and young people.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
- • Nature journalling
- • Mindfulness in nature
- • Theoretical frameworks underpinning Nature Play
- • Program design and planning
- • Identifying play urges in young children
- • Reading landscapes & wild spaces
- • How to set up a base camp
- • Conducting risk assessments
- • Appropriate tool use for children
- • Introduction to bird language
- • Introduction to animal tracking
WHAT PAST PARTICIPANTS SAY
“This course is for anyone who loves the outdoors and exploring their own relationships with the ‘natural’ world. It is also for anyone dismayed at the rapid changes happening to the beloved ecosystems around them and wondering how they can simultaneously deepen their understanding of what we call ‘Nature’ and help guide children to find their own relationship with it.”
“The Nature Academy training has been an amazing tool to increase my level of awareness and preparation to be a nature mentor. The structure of the course is very flexible and reasonable. The weekly Zoom sessions with all the students and the coordinators were immensely valuable. Thanks so much for a great experience of training and personal growth!”
“In these times of rapid ecological change, when so many of us are feeling distressed and unsure about what we can do- this course offers a solution that is both philosophical and highly practical- reconnecting ourselves and our children with the natural world.”
