[Central Coast CA Permaculture] The 4th annual Reaching Nature Connection Conference

[Quail Springs Permaculture]

“Only as a child’s awareness and reverence for the wholeness of life are developed can his humanity to his own kind reach its full development."  ~ Rachel Carson


Dear friends,

Quail Springs is a proud co-sponsor of the Reaching Nature Connection Conference, now in it’s 4th year.  Designed for those with interest in developmentally appropriate nature mentoring for children, whether as teachers, mentors, counselors, parents or grandparents, this Conference is a fun, rewarding, community building experience.

We hope you will consider joining us at the 4th annual Reaching Nature Connection Conference in Santa Barbara, CA, July 11 and 12.  Join with others committed to bringing young children and Nature together.  

Our guest presenter for 2015 is Wendolyn Bird, founder & director of Tender Tracks Tales & Trails, storyteller, musician, & author of “Tales from Earth & Sky”.

Join us for Two fun days of hands-on learning in Nature's playground!  Gain tools, songs, games, stories and much more to help bring adults and children alike into a closer relationship with Nature.  

With this year’s conference theme, Storyteller’s Journey, presenters Lia Grippo, Kelly Villarruel, Erin Boehme & Wendolyn Bird will take participants on a storytelling journey to develop capacities for using stories as effective teaching tools for nature connection & beyond.

Learn more here:  http://www.forestkindergartenacademy.org/reaching-nature-connection-annual-conference.html

If you have any questions, please be in touch.

Best,

Kolmi Majumdar

~~~~~~~

As educators, we can never give a child what we don't have.  In many ways, we ourselves are the curriculum. Many years ago, during a period of intense study of birds, bird language, and bird behavior, I was with my class of young ones in the forest.  Every bird I heard, I tried to imitate.  I wasn't always good at it, but I tried.  Never having spoken to the children about what I was doing, I simply paid attention and responded in their presence, all the while serving the snack, or tying someone's shoes, grinding rocks for paint, or any number of other tasks that needed tending.  After many weeks of this, at the end of the morning, a 4 year old girl occupied with packing her lunch back into her backpack, focus and attention directed on the effort, when a nearby acorn woodpecker called out from the tall sycamore tree above.  Wacka wacka wacka it called, to greet a family member, returning from a forage.  Without lifting her head or pausing in her undertaking, she answered the woodpecker with her own wacka, wacka, wacka.   I remained silent on the matter with great difficulty.  Inside, I was cheering and celebrating her broadened awareness, her sense of connection, and her sense of normalcy in it all.  Being in relationship with the world around her was a given.  It would likely always be. ~ Lia Grippo (Reaching Nature Connection Conference presenter, The Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers, Co-founder/Instructor   www.forestkindergartenacademy.org)


Every child is born a naturalist. His eyes are, by nature, open to the glories of the stars, the beauty of the flowers, and the mystery of life.   ~ R. Search




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