As nature preschools grow in popularity, will they become accessible to all?
FARMINGTON HILLS, Michigan —The preschoolers are dressed as winter hikers, wearing water-resistant bib snow pants, wool socks and pastel hats that obscure their ears. They sink into the snow, roll it into balls and find icicles without noticing the cold.
The late January afternoon is ahead of them and they have no immediate plans to walk through a doorframe or stand inside an enclosed space. They will listen for birds chirping, write letters in the snow and ponder if a squirrel created a pattern of shallow divots in the snow.
At Farmington Hills' the nature preschool in Farmington Hills, Michigan, students are promised an immersive experience in the 211-acre park. This school year is the first for the program, created after the city noticed parents clamoring for more early childhood education in an outdoor setting.
Becky Christlieb, mother of 4-year-old Georgia, said she’s noticed her daughter is “a lot more resilient” from attending nature preschool a few days a week.
In nature preschool, sometimes referred to as outdoor school or forest school, students learn without walls. In this concept that began in Europe, educators let nature guide lessons. In Farmington Hills, that means hikes are halted to look at animal tracks or take notice of webs of poison ivy clinging to a tree.
The number of nature preschool programs in the U.S. has increased from 275 in 2017 to an estimated 585 in 2020, according to the Natural Start Alliance, an organization that seeks to incorporate nature in education settings. The organization estimates 10-20 programs in Michigan alone.
Some programs scattered across the state are accessible to families through state funding. But many are expensive — as much as $129 a day in the case of one program in Ann Arbor — or run just a few hours a few days per week. The programs are concentrated in wealthier communities.
Still, education leaders, researchers and parents are hopeful that nature programs can be accessible to all.
Erin Johnson, a mother and homeschooler in Detroit, has created Urban Forest School, an outdoor program in partnership with Black to the Land Coalition, that meets about once a month in and around Detroit, engaging children with different outdoor environments.
Johnson wants Black children to build strong relationships with the environment. People of color have been historically excluded from outdoor spaces.
“We are building here in Detroit a forest school community and it's really beautiful to witness,” she said. “Detroit obviously has a long, storied history of African-centered education … and so we stand on their shoulders, and this is certainly kind of a part of that legacy.”
Learning to socialize
At 4-years-old, children are developing language and motor skills at a rapid pace, according to the Cleveland Clinic. They can tell stories and understand more complicated requests. At this stage, preschoolers develop more independence.
It’s also an important time for children to learn to socialize.
There’s evidence that children are more prosocial in outdoor environments, said Julia Torquati, a professor of childhood development at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Prosocial behavior is behavior meant to help others.
“When there's a naturalized play space, you see less aggressive behavior and more prosocial behavior: helping, cooperating, sustained play — that sort of thing,” she said.
Detroit’s program takes children on adventures in Detroit parks and in other forests in the state. Johnson said the group has taken children of all ages to tap maple trees, take hikes and strap on snowshoes in the winter.
In Farmington, prosocial behavior is on display as children think through tasks together. Earlier in the year, the students built shelters together, Valerie Larsen, program director, said. On a Monday in January, they speculated together about animal tracks left in the snow.
Teacher Kim Rudolph, formerly a middle school teacher, helped prompt more thoughts from the preschoolers, asking to count “toes on each track” and the number of tracks.
But children still learn traditional lessons, too, she said. Those lessons just happen outside: When handling scissors, for example, they may learn by cutting small branches. They know to spell out their names, but they use tools found naturally to do it.
“People wonder how we teach the normal school stuff outside, but it's really not any more difficult,” Rudolph said. “Because we can read books outside. You can draw words in the snow, right? And then they get that motor development and exercise.”
Rudolph and a co-teacher also help students build imagination. When one preschooler, Lillian, stood still while on a hike, the teachers pretended they’d lost her until she erupted with others into giggles.
Nature school offers a lot of opportunities to foster creativity, according to Torquati.
”Promoting that pretend imaginary play, it's creative because you're thinking about how you can use objects in lots of different ways,” Torquati said. “It's really supporting the development of symbolic thinking, when a stick or a rock can be something else.”
And it helps them develop a sense of risk. One Farmington student, Jack, stood atop a hill, still in the teachers’ line of sight but farther away from other kids. Later, he clutched a massive block of ice in his arms and, like many kids do, considered licking it. The teachers asked him to consider whether the ice was clean, so he could decide on his own to leave the ice behind.
“The confidence they build, self-esteem, they sometimes are collaborating with other kids while they're doing something,” Larsen said. “Maybe it's four of them on a tree and they have to figure out their spatial relations with each other.”
Making outdoor school accessible
The median price of early childhood programs in the U.S is $8,320, according to the Brookings Institution.
Nature preschool prices are comparable to that average, and sometimes lower, but schedules are largely for half days, difficult hours for working parents to maintain, and fill in with child care, which also costs money.
Farmington’s school, a city-sponsored program, costs $4,860 for students to attend five days a week, for three hours a day, running from September to June. Ann Arbor Forest School, costs $129 a day for a three-hour program. Woodland Forest Center in Lapeer County charges $2,650 for a half-day program four days a week.
While comparable to other preschool programs, nature-based programs are still emerging, and harder to find and access for parents. Farmington started small this year, with 45 students spread across the different days of the week, with about eight students per program.
Ashlie Smith, supervisor of Farmington’s Nature Center, said Farmington expects a waitlist for the 2023-24 school year, based on the number of students who have already enrolled.
Families in Michigan who qualify based on income and other socioeconomic factors can enroll students in some preschool programs tuition-free through the Great Start Readiness Program. The program is funded by the state. But few nature preschools are Great Start Readiness providers. Farmington, for instance, is not.
A search through programs in Oakland and Wayne counties turned up no outdoor-based Great Start Readiness programs. Tami Mannes, director of early childhood for the Ottawa Area Intermediate School District, wrote in an email that three outdoor programs utilize Great Start Readiness funds.
At least one outdoor program in the Saginaw area, Murphy Farm, is a provider through Great Start Readiness and Head Start funding, wrote Ericka Taylor, the executive director of Saginaw Intermediate School District’s early childhood programs.
“They spend more time outside than any of our other sites,” Taylor wrote. “We provide raincoats, rain boots, snow boots, etc.”
Extra gear, such as wool layers instead of cotton (“cotton kills” is a popular refrain from winter hikers, Larsen said, because the material fails to insulate when it becomes wet), protective gloves and boots cost families more money, too. With more than one child, the cost can add up.
But people like Johnson are working to make sure these spaces are accessible beyond wealthy communities.
Black to the Land Coalition specifically, Johnson said, is focused on “helping Black and brown people redevelop and reclaim holistic relationships with nature.” Johnson’s Urban Forest School programs often don’t come with a cost and happen in free parks, including Belle Isle and Palmer Park.
And a part of the purpose of the forest school, to Johnson, is to build awareness among children of the world around them, and appreciation for the environment.
“We're really focused on placemaking and helping children understand and see that, ‘Hey, this is your park, this is your space’ and so we should explore it and know it and honor it,” she said.
Contact Lily Altavena: laltavena@freepress.com.