Reimagining our relationships to land through natural curiosity
Natural Curiosity offers a powerful way to engage children in learning about their world. This webinar introduces a transformative approach to early years learning on the land, which first begins with reimagining our own relationship to the natural world. How might educators model an ongoing, intimate, and deeply informed relationship with the land, in ways that help children to develop a more reciprocal relationship to place, and to each other?
You are invited to ignite the fire of your professional inquiry by exploring how reimagining and restoring our relationship with land can transform practice in early learning environments, rooted in reconciliation with the land.
To prepare for this webinar, you are invited to watch Elder Dave Courchene's video and to think with the following questions:
• What is our relationship to the natural world?
• How would our practice be different if we had a relationship with the land?
• How can land-based inquiry learning support early years educators, students, and families to develop a connection to Indigenous perspectives, in the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation?
You can share your ideas, curiosities and/or questions about how we understand our relationship to the natural world in this Padlet.
We highly encourage you to attend this webinar. This is an extraordinary opportunity to generate ideas, curiosities, questions and possibilities together about how we understand our relationship to the natural world. We're sure that your ideas will make the facilitated small group conversations, a rich and meaningful experience.
Haley Higdon is the Program Director of Natural Curiosity at the University of Toronto’s Laboratory School, and acted as the Managing Editor for the development and creation of Natural Curiosity 2nd Edition: The Importance of Indigenous Perspectives in Children’s Environmental Inquiry. Combining her classroom teaching experience and strong commitment to environmental sustainability, Haley has provided hundreds of professional learning experiences for educators across Canada and beyond, demonstrating an inquiry-based approach to experiential environmental education that can in turn be applied in any learning environment. Haley’s workshops are often created in partnership with Early Years, Outdoor and/or Indigenous Education Leads from some of Canada’s largest school boards and early learning centres, as well as leading professionals in the fields of experiential, environmental and Indigenous education.