ABOUT NSW EARLY YEARS NATURE CONNECTIONS
NSW Early Years Nature Connections provides a platform for like minded educators to network. We share experiences, professional learning, readings and resources. We believe in fostering children’s connections with nature through play and promoting the importance of learning in natural environments.
Our network includes educators of all levels of experience and qualifications. Some of us have been venturing ‘out the gate’ with children for years while others are just beginning. Our nature play spaces vary from national parks to paddocks to beaches to tiny patches of green in urban landscapes. We believe that children’s connection to nature should be fostered in relation to their context and that all children have a right to develop their own, personal relationship with the natural world.
OUR VISION
A community of learners who are invested in a generous exchange of knowledge, experience, resources and time.
To build a community of learners who are committed to supporting all children’s connections with nature and promoting their understandings of their role in caring for our world.
To support the development of an ecological identity in educators, children and families.
To promote research, advocacy and activism for nature within the context of curriculum.
OBJECTIVES
PURPOSE
Our purpose is to promote young children spending more time outdoors in nature.
BELIEFS
We value the rights of children to have a joyful childhood, playing in nature.
We recognise the immediate and long term benefits for children in connecting with nature.
We value the Australian context and recognise the human impact on our unique environment.
We commit to Reconciliation and learning from Indigenous understandings and knowledges.
We believe In education for sustainability (EfS) because we recognise the long term benefits and consequences for the earth.
We believe the foundations of nature play are grounded in the notions of belonging to place, community and each other.
We acknowledge the dispositional learning of children.
We promote the ethics of care, optimism, listening and participation.