Experience Learning

This play actively stimulates their senses and engages them with their environment, thus creating an opportunity to be leaders in the process of gaining knowledge by actually doing and living through something. We have seen that allowing the real life experience to educate in preschool and inform their minds is a much more effective approach to learning and retaining information.

Being in nature

Immersed in nature, our Saplings Club have the opportunity to create an environment for experimentation and spontaneity based on their own initiatives, guiding themselves through problem solving, risk taking, perseverance, patience and building their self-confidence and autonomy.

Language Acquisition

Young children acquire a second language effortlessly without being directly taught, developing literacy skills with each discovery. A variety of songs, rhymes and finger plays, help to improve articulation and pronunciation as they mimic the sounds that they hear.

Full immersion English language acquisition is facilitated in an outdoor classroom. This active preschool environment provides hands on experiences and opportunity for verbal and non-verbal communication, allowing the children to absorb vocabulary and meaning with all their senses. It is an approach that children find comfortable and non intimidating, one that they can adapt to with ease.

Outdoor learning

As the Forest School Association states within its main principles, long-term developmental benefits can be seen from regular participation in nature play and outdoor learning.

Social / Emotional

Exploring nature, our Saplings Club have opportunities to collaborate by making decisions and taking turns being leaders and followers as they foster their interests and are challenged by trying new experiences.  Through team work collaborations they learn to respect each other’s ideas, preferences and points of view; they are building friendships, defending rights and standing up for each other and themselves during conflict-resolution.  Children learn about their emotions and the emotions of others through empathy.

Independence and autonomy are encouraged and developed through responsibilities and trust, both of which we work towards at all stages of the day.

Cognitive Skills

Nature is the ultimate child centred learning environment where children are the conductors and choreographers of their play, the outdoors becomes their stage. Almost everything is tangible in nature and validating their discoveries with conversations, investigations and documentation fosters a child’s imagination and creativity.

Outdoors the opportunities to explore math and science are behind every bush and under every rock.  Children practice counting, sorting and comparing with basic concepts dealing with sizes, shapes and colours. Trees, plants, flowers, fruits, creatures, insects, birds and small animals are all a part of our daily encounters.

Physical Skills

Gross motor skills develop with a combination of daily explorations such as walking, running, trekking, climbing, jumping, rolling down hills, building and balancing.

Fine motor skills develop as our Saplings Club learn 
pruning, picking, collecting, creating, recording and drawing, and through arts and crafts activities such as woodwork, clay work, ropes and knots, basket weaving and loom work.

Mixed age groups

Maria Montessori was one of the first to hone in on the advantages of children being together in mixed age groups.

Research and our own experiences have shown that this method significantly benefits both the older and younger children in a preschool. They are interested in sharing and learning each others skills, feeding off each others' capabilities.

The older children develop a sense of responsibility; showing empathy and kindness towards their younger friends and bringing them on their journey of development. Helping the younger children with more difficult tasks teaches compassion and gives them a sense of satisfaction and reward.

The younger children are stimulated by observing older children perform more challenging tasks and gladly ask to try and learn new experiences.

Development goals:

Social development: Playing, empathy, feelings, sharing, problem solving, cooperation.

Physical development: Gross motor - Walking, running, jumping, balancing, climbing. Fine motor - Controlling, gripping, coordinating, manipulating.

Cognitive development: Observing, experimenting, exploring, trial & error.

Logical thinking: Sorting, comparing, measuring, counting, role playing.

Language development: Receptive & expressive, listening & comprehension, repetition, vocabulary acquisition.