The Natural Start Alliance offers hour-long webinars on topics of key interest to early childhood professionals that aim to support the programs in this growing field.
Upcoming webinars will be listed below and recordings will be posted, after the event.
The Natural Start Alliance partnered with the National Farm to School Network for the webinar, “Aligning Outdoor Learning & Farm to ECE.” Explore resources for connecting Farm to Early Care and Education and outdoor learning.
The Natural Start Alliance teamed up with the Evanston Public Library to shine a spotlight on the Blueberry Book Awards. View a recording of the live event and get familiar with some excellent nature books for young children!
The Natural Start Alliance teamed up with the Evanston Public Library to shine a spotlight on the Blueberry Awards, a new literary award that honors books about nature. Panelists examined what makes a children’s book about nature stand out, how books written for young children are exploring nature connection, sustainability, and environmental stewardship, and why that matters, especially now. View the webinar recording for a look at the best children’s literature about nature, as designated by a committee of librarians and environmentalists. You’ll walk away with new ideas about the power of story and a list of books to add to your classroom library!
In this interactive webinar, presenters provided strategies to facilitate students' interaction with nature, particularly with students who live in areas where substantial inequities exist between children and their lack of access to a clean and healthy environment.
In this webinar, the Natural Start Alliance, National Wildlife Federation's Early Childhood Health Outdoors (ECHO), and members of the Seven November team (a strategic communications firm) share the findings from a comprehensive messaging analysis initiative around early childhood education.
The Natural Start Alliance collaborates with state and regional groups around the country to advocate for and promote outdoor learning as a high-quality approach to early childhood education. These groups work from the very local to the regional level to support and provide training to educators all along the outdoor learning spectrum, from those just stepping outdoors with their students for the first time to those operating nature-based preschools. This forum features the Minnesota Early Childhood Outdoors (MnECO), sharing their success in partnering with the Minnesota Department of Education to develop outdoor learning resources for all early childhood educators.
This Natural Start forum explores reflective practice and how it can help educators work through difficult and emotional professional challenges and the stress of teaching.
It’s that time of year again: time to treat your family and friends (and yourself!) to a special gift! And what makes a better gift than a good book? The second annual Holiday Book Fair, featured resource books from Dr. Carla Gull and Peter Dargatz and children’s book recommendations from speech-language pathologist and self-proclaimed book lover, Ranita Anderson.
Natural Start invited Sarah Heller, co-founder and former director of Fiddleheads Forest School, to share the process she developed at Fiddleheads to enroll families with equity in mind. Sarah has spent the last two years learning about enrollment practices and asking questions with the goal of learning how to build more equitable systems and reduce barriers to accessing nature-based education.
Nature-based education prioritizes emergent, child-directed learning that’s individualized for each child, but we don’t often follow the same principles when it comes to our own professional learning. In this UnPD forum, we’ll give one another permission to design and facilitate (un)professional development for ourselves that authentically meets our individual and collective needs, rather than subscribing to the traditional school model (hence “unPD”).
How do we develop programs that are welcoming and inclusive to all members of our communities? What does it mean to be culturally relevant? This forum will explore how parents and educators in one community approach these questions. We heard stories from a public school educator, a parent, and a nature-based preschool founder in Minneapolis, MN, as they shared their different paths to nature and what culturally relevant teaching means to them.
The right gear is essential for outdoor learning, but many families and schools view gear as a barrier. We’ve asked four leaders from four different programs to share how they acquire and manage gear in ways that are equitable and accessible.
