Adding Nature to Homeschooling

Called "Wildschooling" - it's a new term to an old idea. Incorporating more nature into children's everyday lives, even while schooling.

" Throughout the first five years of my older daughter’s life, I watched her dance through the clover, climb trees, puddle jump and play her way through the day. As she stood on the threshold to kindergarten, I pictured her stuck inside at a desk, cut off from her relationship to the wild, and my stomach sank. I believe that school is for nurturing children’s innate talents and helping them figure out where those gifts, necessarily diverse, fit in the whole. The school system, by contrast, tends to produce a monoculture. Despite the heroic efforts of many thoughtful, caring teachers, public school mostly prepares children to be obedient workers and fails millions of students who don’t fit the mold.

So I developed a method called Wildschooling, a form of home-schooling that celebrates an interconnected, relational view of nature, which I now practice with my two daughters and two nieces on our farm near Cedar Springs, Mich. We’re hardly the first people to approach education this way; numerous earth-centered cultures, such as the Anishinabe of our region, and Richard Louv, the author of “Last Child in the Woods,” are just a few important influences."

Read the full article by Nicolette Sowder on The New York Times