Nature School
Nature has always been our classroom. We have been teaching outdoors since Schlitz Audubon Nature Preschool was founded in 2003. Nature is our teaching partner as we spend our days between our four outdoor classrooms and the beautiful surrounding nature trails. The school’s uniqueness stems from our strong commitment to social and emotional learning and developing a sense of community through an emergent curriculum and inquiry-based learning. During a year at Nature School, a child might watch a monarch butterfly begin its migration to Mexico, catch a frog at Mystery Lake, and learn to tap a maple tree.
We are a 2019 U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon School. The Nature School is part of Green & Healthy Schools Wisconsin and is recognized as a Sugar Maple Level school. We are also a member of Natural Start Alliance, which is part of the North American Association for Environmental Education.
At the Nature School, we spend the majority of our class time outside exploring throughout all of the seasons. With proper seasonal attire, our students learn to embrace the rain, snow, and sunshine alike, as well as any other weather Wisconsin has to offer. Students begin to develop a sense of place and an understanding of the natural world that surrounds us all. Our students learn by doing – they climb on logs, search for insects, dig for worms, hike the trails, splash in puddles, play in the snow. Following an emergent curriculum and with the guidance of professional educators they also recognize the patterns in pinecones, count the petals on flowers, write poems about seasonal phenomena, and illustrate stories about chipmunks.
Our Learning Environment
We are a fully licensed, nine-month outdoor early childhood program offering morning or afternoon half-day Nature Preschool or Nature K4 classes. The classes are co-taught by professionally trained and motivated teachers who offer years of early childhood and outdoor nature-based teaching experience. With a maximum of 16 children in each of our four outdoor classrooms, there is a ratio of one teacher for every eight children. These ratios and our training requirements exceed the requirements of the State of Wisconsin and meet the accreditation criteria set forth by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Nature Preschool
The outdoor nature-based play journey that starts with Audubon Babies and Audubon Toddlers continues in Nature Preschool, where children in our Chickadee, Cardinal, and Nuthatch classrooms grow through increased social engagement. Nature Preschool children ages three to five years old begin to learn interpersonal skills and independence and develop a sense of community that includes the natural world. Our students have time to explore and follow their own ideas. They use the magic of unstructured play to work through conflict, work as a group, spark curiosity and self-exploration. The children tackle tasks and learning when they are developmentally ready and begin to develop the building blocks for success in the future. Some of these abilities include curiosity, asking questions, and knowing empathy for plants, animals, and each other. We provide social and emotional learning that you cannot get sitting at a desk, which prepares them for a future life of learning.
Nature K4
The students in our Nature K4 programs have authentic learning experiences through an inquiry-based curriculum using the phenology of the seasons and the children’s own interests and wonderings. With experienced teachers as guides, the students learn how to learn and how to be curious about the world around them.
By their K4 year, our Chickadee and Goldfinch students are connecting language, literacy, math, and science to outdoor nature-based experiences at the same time they are beginning to take steps to care for and protect the natural environment. All this creates a strong foundation that connects each program to the next. Children are prepared for the future by gaining skills of the fundamentals through practice and by accomplishing appropriate tasks in the real world. These skills are gained within a safe community, which is an accomplishment of our students’ own initiative, achieved in concert with their supportive teachers.