Seeing the Forest and The Trees

Online Presentation by Speaker Laura Molyneux

Thursday, March 2nd 2023 | 6:30 - 7:30pm EST

Fitting Forest and Nature Schools into the childcare landscape in Canada. 

This presentation will look at the benefits and barriers of including outdoor, play and place based programs into regulated childcare policy. While some provinces have regulated Forest and Nature School within existing regulations, Newfoundland and Labrador is seeking to create unique legislative requirements for Forest and Nature Schools highlighting the unique skills of practitioners and treating our inspectors and educators the same way we treat our children - as capable and competent individuals.

Laura Molyneux (She/her) is the co-founder of Cloudberry Forest School in St John's NL. Cloudberry is a place-based early years program with programs for children and families 18 months to adult as well as a teaching site for ECE students and in-service educators and has been operating since 2014. Over the past 2 years Cloudberry has been working alongside the provincial department of education creating a pilot program and research space to explore the barriers and benefits to licensing outdoor play programs and "outside the fence" policies to support risky play, natural and loose parts but more importantly informing policy makers to consider reflective policy making that benefits children, adults, inspectors and policy makers.

Land Acknowledgement: Cloudberry Forest School respectfully acknowledges the Island of Ktaqamkuk, the land on which we gather, work, and play as the ancestral and unceded homelands of the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq. We also recognize Innu of Nitassinan and the Inuit of Nunatsiavut and Nunatukavut. Place and land are integrated into the core of the work that we do and we strive to continue to improve on the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and to learn from land as much as we learn on it.