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PARENT SERIES: Learn with the Author



If you've been considering a forest or nature-based program for your child, or want to learn more about how your child's forest school creates a strong learning foundation, we invite you to join us. ERAFANS is proud to partner with several nature-based schools and organizations to bring you this Parent Series featuring presenters that illuminate benefits of nature-based learning and provide fantastic tips and activities for families along the way.

SESSION DESCRIPTIONS

Thursday, January 19 at 7 PM (EST)
Moving More as a Family in 2023: Let's Grow Wild
Featuring Katy Bowman, author of Grow Wild: The Whole-Child, Whole-Family Nature-Rich Guide to Moving More

Movement is essential for human health, and children’s natural desire to move is so reflexive, so innate, that teaching is not necessarily required. What is required is access to an environment that allows for, even encourages, movement. While there’s a lot that families can do to create movement-friendly home environments, a nutritious movement diet starts with moving outdoors in nature. Outdoor time is an invitation not only to run and hike, but to clamber and climb and leap and swim, to feel with the skin, listen for clues, and peer into the far distance. Nature-based education can support the health of the whole child in a myriad of ways that are difficult for classroom-based, seated-at-your-desk programs.

Thursday, March 23 at 7 PM (EST)
The Decline of Outdoor Play - And Rise in Sensory Issues
Featuring Angela Hanscom, author of Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children

As we continue to decrease children’s time and space to move and play outdoors, we are seeing a simultaneous rise in the number of children that are presenting with sensory and motor deficits. At the same time, classroom teachers are observing more and more children having trouble with attention, falling out of their seats in school, increased clumsiness, and even aggressiveness with games like tag on the playground.

So, how can we reverse this alarming trend of sensory and motor issues in children? How can we ensure that children are fully engaging their body, mind, and all of their senses? Using the same philosophy that lies at the heart of her popular TimberNook program—that nature is the ultimate sensory experience, and that psychological and physical health improves for children when they spend time outside on a regular basis—Angela Hanscom offers several strategies to help children thrive in outdoor environments using a therapeutic approach to nature play.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS

Katy Bowman
Author, speaker, and a leader of the Movement movement, biomechanist Katy Bowman, M.S. is changing the way we move and think about our need for movement. Her nine books, including the groundbreaking Move Your DNA, and Grow Wild: The Whole-Child, Whole-Family, Nature-Rich Guide To Moving More have been translated into more than 15 languages worldwide.

Angela J. Hanscom
Angela is a pediatric occupational therapist and founder of TimberNook—an award-winning developmental and nature-based program that has gained international popularity. She is the author of Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children. Hanscom is also a frequent contributor to The Washington Post and in 2019 won a Small Business of the year award for the State of New Hampshire.  

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
This series is especially for parents who want to learn more about the benefits of nature-based education, nature play, and outdoor learning. Of course, nature-based educators are also welcome to join us! Attendees may include: parents, teachers and administrators in preschool, childcare, elementary school or homeschool settings; naturalists, environmental educators, or outdoor educators; and wilderness survival enthusiasts.

*If you are unable to make a session, don't worry! We will record each session to share with all registrants.

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