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White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group, Kansas City, MO, USA

Green Hearts to Build an Early Childhood Nature School

Green Hearts is developing a “children’s nature center” as a unique conservation strategy and as a new approach to restoring outdoor play to childhood. The first children’s nature center is now under design. It is intended to serve as a prototype for more such centers in the future, and may influence the design and operation of traditional nature centers.

Green Hearts Institute for Nature in Childhood is a young, nonprofit conservation organization that stresses play-based nature experiences for young children. Their work reflects the research that has found that frequent, unstructured, play-based experiences in nature are the most common influence on the development of life-long conservation values.

Green Hearts’ signature project is the creation of a new type of nature center that is entirely designed around the needs and interests of children. Although this approach is common in the general museum field - i.e., children’s museums - there is currently no parallel model among nature centers.

Green Hearts is now designing a prototype children’s nature center for a tract of woods and wetlands owned by a conservation district in Papillion, Nebraska - near to Green Hearts’ Omaha offices. This facility will encourage active outdoor play and discovery, breaking the ubiquitous rules of most nature centers by allowing collecting, running, digging, climbing, and hiding, as well as more quiet pretend play. Plans are to create child-scale landscapes, habitat enhancements, and structural features to support these kinds of play throughout roughly one third of the 90-acre site.

The center’s core program will be a tuition-based, nature-focused preschool for ages three to five. The half-day preschool classes will go on daily outdoor explorations in all safe weather conditions, enjoying discovery and play under the gentle guidance of professional teachers. Preschoolers will also enjoy self-directed outdoor play every day, in a confined natural playground (about 1 acre). The nature theme will infuse most indoor activities, as well, with a“ whole child” curriculum built around the seasons and other natural cycles.

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