September 28, 2023
Our whole group of teachers gathered socially this week and our conversation, which inevitably spiraled in content around the topics of early childhood, play-based learning, and nature connection brought me emphatically back to my core beliefs in creating A Thousand Mornings Forest School. While I often believe those beliefs to be fairly transparent, it still seems relevant to reiterate them here, through the lens of our experiences at school this week.
My core beliefs are that:
Play is learning
Play is essential for developing integrated, curious, healthy humans
Nature is our first and most important teacher, and
Less is always more.
Some people might choose a play-based preschool as a sort of exception— with the belief that in these early years there is permission to take reprieve from actual learning, a small space in which we can allow children to play before they do the "real" work of eventual academic learning in a more traditional setting. Quite to the contrary, the things we do daily are very much learning, not just in spite of the fact that they are fun, engaging, and self-initiated by our friends, but in fact, because of those realities.
A child too small to climb Oakalyptus, dragging a small log over to its base to give themselves a boost, is both a problem solving technique and a full body workout; this is a wonderful example of how children develop executive functioning skills, which are necessary to do any multi-step process successfully in the rest of life. Climbing a tree itself requires motor planning, hand-eye coordination, and stabilization of the core muscles, all of which are necessary for writing. Riding a log as a "tree train" as a group requires communication and cooperation, honing children's social skills, creativity, and language development. Painting or rolling playdough or even pinching beads out of the dirt builds fine motor skills. Sorting beans by size or shape is a pre-math skill.
Everything we are doing is intentional and yet the most brilliant part is that it requires absolutely nothing of us. Children are hard-wired to learn.
Recently I watched my friend's seven month old baby attempt to crawl. He repeatedly folded himself forward from the sitting position and put his hands beneath his shoulders, placing himself in tabletop position and then rocking back and forth. Not only did he do this on his own, he clearly loved it. In this moment, I was struck by the aforementioned reality which I frequently revisit: we are hard-wired to learn, to progress, to evolve. No one sat down and instructed this baby on the mechanics of crawling. No one pushed him to crawl before he could even sit. No one chastised him for not crawling early enough, well enough, precisely enough. Rather, when he traveled through a series of preceding developmental markers, he arrived at the moment of testing out crawling and was allowed to experiment, fumble, assess, and persist. Eventually he will crawl and it requires no direct instruction. Eventually he will also walk, run, climb, and leap. What he needed was space to move freely, some gentle cushioning should he fall, joyful encouragement from his parents. What he needed was trust.
My deep belief is everything can be learned this way. Sometimes we'll need specific information, refined techniques, or support. But the pathway there never begins with force. It begins with the desire of the learner. What we are doing at school is cultivating desire, cultivating love, exploration, curiosity, joy, exuberance. With that energy, anything is possible.
And nature is just the most organic backdrop for it all. When we have less stuff, less artificial stimulation, less transitions, less interference, less expectation, less words, it all flows so much more easily, so organically.
This week our friends played camping and ice cream shop on repeat. They played with slime and playdough full of fall flowers. They celebrated the arrival of fall with a real tea party and a visit from Little Witch Hazel. They pushed each other in the hammock, played instruments, twirled ribbons, pretended to be birds, trailed baby trolls through a treehouse, made mud, practiced using real tools, blew bubbles, hunted for snails on the trees, and swept the forest floor. This is all learning.
It's my anthem. If you've been with us for years now, you've heard me say it over and over again. I'll keep saying it yearly, monthly, weekly, with the hope that this idea permeates the universal consciousness. What we are doing daily at school is fun, but it's also essential. It is the return to simplicity, to the way our bodies and brains are meant to learn, to our core being, to nature. It is learning. And for this reality and all the joy it brings, we are so grateful.