Today on Blooming Curious I am so pleased to welcome Daniel Burton.
Daniel is a nature educator specializing in outdoor classrooms.
Along with his team at Educated by Nature, Daniel leads children,
parents and teachers to develop connections and learn within nature
through their various programs.
Educated by Nature aims to increase the mental, Emotional and physical
health of children and foster deep love of the natural environment.
So welcome to Blooming Curious, Daniel.
It's such a treat to have you today, especially after your
whirlwind international trip that you've just come back from.
Uh, thank you so much for having me Edwina.
It's such a pleasure.
It's so lovely to meet with you, actually, after following you guys and everything
that you've been doing for, wow, more than 10 years, I'd say probably close to
about, it's probably about 10 or 12 years.
Listen, let's start with you.
Can you share a little bit about your story behind Educated by Nature and what
inspired you to start this initiative?
Great question.
, I love an origin story.
So, uh, myself and my, , good friend and colleague and business partner, co
founder of Educated by Nature, Trudy Bennett, we were both, , teachers
at, Bold Park Community School.
So a nature based, nature inspired, regio inspired, uh, then
primary school and middle school.
Now it's, it's K to 12, , school here in Perth, Western Australia, , and we.
taught most of our time teaching together actually in the last four
years of our time at Bold Park within an upper primary classroom.
So we were teaching year 4, 5, 6.
And our then principal, the founder of Bold Park, Julian McAuliffe
challenged us to have a classroom outside for two days a week.
So we had, we took our class, we had a patch of green space at the
edge of at the edge of the school.
It was a space called the wild space by the students.
It was a space that they engaged with during recess and lunchtime,
and we made that our classroom for 2 whole days a week.
And in that time, we just saw an incredible way that
children learn and engage
in the outdoors, in nature, and the way that nature holds us as
learners, um, and supports so many aspects of our, , not only academic
abilities, but mental health, social engagement, um, the ability to,
develop self efficacy and self worth.
And we just saw our children come alive.
And so through that process and having that experience, Trudy and I
were, we're driven to support more educators to teach in this way and
to provide more experiences for children to have these opportunities.
So we stepped out of the classroom and started Educator by Nature 10 years ago.
This year actually, , as a way to kind of advocate for this way of learning,
this way of working with children and advocating for children's right to play,
their right to have , an opportunity to connect with a natural world and yeah.
Build deep connection.
That right, that children have actually, I think is being eroded, , every single day.
It does worry me that we don't.
respect children enough to actually give them those things that are, really
, their natural birthright, you know?
Listen, I know exactly what space you're talking about, because I actually have
visited Bold Park a few years ago, but you spoke about how you saw children
come alive and how they changed when you were in this outdoor classroom.
Can you be more specific and say, What kind of changes did you notice
in children and the way they were learning and the way they were
interacting when you were outside?
Yeah, absolutely.
like many classrooms today, we had a cohort of students who had additional
needs and had, additional elements that got in the way of the learning process.
children, uh, with ASD on the autism spectrum with ADHD with things like
clinically diagnosed anxiety, a whole spectrum of different
things that get in the way of their ability to learn and engage.
And what we noticed when we had the outdoor classroom, when the students were
outside in this space, those barriers seemed to disappear almost or at least.
reduced dramatically.
So their ability to engage within, the learning process to engage with each
other, to find success in the process of learning and engaging with a curriculum,
with, uh, knowledge acquisition, with, , inquiry, all of those things got easier.
And apart from that academic element, we saw them come alive.
We saw a spark.
We saw, inquisitiveness.
We saw social collaboration.
We saw those children that were quieter inside , the classroom become the leaders.
We saw those children take on leadership roles and, really inspire the direction
of the learning and the direction of , the focus of our, classroom
projects and programs and things like that.
Um, yeah, it was a whole new magical way of learning.
So tell me something.
Did you just take your lessons from the inside outside?
In other words, just a different setting, or did you actually change the way
you taught because you were outside?
Does that make sense?
Absolutely.
And we talk with educators are a lot about exactly that question.
And I think for us, um, it was a mix of both.
There were definitely elements that was just our lessons that we were doing inside
that we picked up and we took outside.
And it was just doing them, , sitting on stools under trees or sitting
in a circle gathered around, an easel with a whiteboard on it.
So having work books or exercise books , and doing lessons sitting on logs.
That was definitely a part of it, but also it was impossible for us
not to be inspired by the natural space and the, projects and the
inquiry processes that came out of inspiration from that natural space.
So then the natural space then inspired the work that we were doing.
So it was, it was a mix of both.
And you mentioned, you had all these children with additional
needs, neurodivergent children.
Why do you think it became easier for them to learn when you were outside?
Because you obviously still had to teach your lessons, right?
You still did your, I guess, your English or maths or other curriculum lessons.
Why do you think they found that easier?
What changed for them?
I think this is where we go into, the therapeutic benefits of natural spaces,
and that being outdoors, being surrounded by greenery, having a different
sense of, auditory input, uh, so the sound of nature, but also the lack of
walls, so the lack of reverberation of
,, sound.
Sound Of a class, , all of those things joined, I think, to make it
a much more cohesive, successful, calm learning environment.
I'm just wondering, I wonder if it's because the sensory needs were
reduced, in the natural environment and perhaps in a classroom, those
sensory needs are just exacerbated.
Do you think that that's part of it?
Absolutely.
And down to things like, so in a classroom situation, there's less room.
So at Bold Park, the environments, the indoor environments are
set up as flexible spaces.
So it's not as if children are bound to a desk or have a single space.
But , even the difference of being in a flexible learning environment to going
outside, there is more flexibility to choose where you sit to learn or where you
stand to learn or where you lie down to learn, like how you utilize that space,
the ability to have movement in that that space while you're learning all of
those things, allowing the body to move in the way that it needs to in order to
to learn and engage, , even down to the, the concept of if we were gathered for a
class meeting, a class discussion or an explicit teaching experience, children
had the opportunity to pick up the leaves and sticks that were around them.
We talk a lot with educators in our work at Educated by Nature about the
fact that a child's fiddling with a stick or a leaf is not interrupting
their ability to listen, it's actually enhancing their ability to listen.
Well, at the moment, I have a pen in my hand and I'm clicking that pen in
our team meetings at Educated by Nature, I'm banned from having a clicky
pen, because I make too much noise.
Our bodies need to move in order to listen and pay attention and attend, so nature
provides us with those opportunities to do that in a much calmer way.
I love the, so the term old fiddle stick, comes from the fact that, our
brain, if we pick up a stick, surrounded by leaves, we can pull that stick apart
and we can fiddle with that object.
Nature provides, so at the moment we've got lots of human
manufactured plastic or metal fidget toys, but nature provides them.
They grow on trees literally like a stick or a leaf is a fiddle toy.
It's a fidget toy and provides something for our fingers and our
bodies to do in order to support our brains to attend , and pay attention.
And we do see in classrooms children with those additional needs all
sitting there with their funny putty or whatever it's called with their
fiddle toys and all those kinds of things.
And, and you know, those things are actually quite expensive
to purchase if you were buying them as a classroom resource.
So, you're right.
Just go outside, get a few sticks and leaves and they can fiddle with
those instead and have a little bit of a connection to nature.
One of the things I love doing is taking my children, my students out of the
classroom, and sometimes we just go and do transient art . And there's this whole
Japanese idea of doing the tree bathing, you know, where people pay apparently
large sums of money to be taken into the forest, so just to lay there and absorb
the oxygen and the feeling and the sounds.
So yes, there is, you know,, strong evidence for the healing power of nature.
That is, I think, where that outdoor teaching comes in and that's how it has
that very calming effect on children.
Tell me, what do you think are particular skills that children develop when they
start working and learning outdoors.
I think, uh, we could talk for hours on this one.
I think one of the key elements that I really love seeing is children's ability
to develop , comfort and stillness and connection with the natural world.
What we're seeing today in a lot of the schools that we're working with, with a
lot of the children that we're working with is that children seem to have
an aversion to even sitting on grass.
So we're working with more and more children who, uh, don't want to sit down
on the ground or get down on the earth.
Maybe that's because they're, they're feeling like they'll get their
uniform or their clothes dirty.
So there is, , I guess sometimes there's a fear that, oh, my parents
will tell me off if I come home and I have , a dirty uniform or dirty clothes.
But also we're seeing that children, have a fear of getting
bitten by an ant, or the bugs and insects that are, in the grass.
Now, I don't want to take away from the fact that getting
bitten by an ant does hurt.
We have some nasty ants.
But the fact is, unless you have, an anaphylactic allergic reaction to
an ant bite, you're not going to die from being bitten by an ant.
You will survive that experience.
So there's a lot to be said about the process of feeling comfort in, and
being okay with being in natural spaces.
And so that ability to feel that calm, that sense of being comfortable and
okay, I think is a skill that is often overlooked in our process of taking
learning outdoors in that simple way to connect with the natural world is
one of the greatest gifts and supports that we can provide for our students.
It's very interesting you say that because I've experienced lots of those kind
of situations where there is just the tiniest little ant or even a bee buzzing
around and oh my goodness everybody goes into flat panic you know and I'm
thinking guys it's just a little insect or there's something in the classroom
you know and you just go take the thing outside but, I have seen this aversion,
children are so fearful of just anything that lives and breaths and crawls.
They are really afraid of them.
I do wonder whether it's because children don't have
gardens anymore or very few do.
We've, become this society now, I think, where our houses are built wall to wall.
There's not a lot of garden or there's artificial grass,
and they are not subject to natural things anymore.
They don't really know how to handle them.
And so that's why I think it's our responsibility as schools and
teachers, we really do have to grow gardens and we really do have
to have outdoor nature spaces.
And teachers also need to stop being afraid of bugs and insects
and those kinds of things.
Because I think it's becoming more and more our responsibility to teach children
that side as well, because they're not getting it in their homes very often.
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
And I think, you've, jumped on a point there, which we're really passionate
about here at Educated by Nature in that I think there's a responsibility and a
growing responsibility to support, our teenagers and our young adults at the
moment, who are the people that are the next generation of early learning
professional teachers who maybe are coming from a, childhood where they
haven't necessarily had those same experiences in the natural world.
And so don't have those comfort levels with being outdoors, have those aversions
to, insects and bugs and creepy crawlies.
And so we're just going to continue to I guess contribute to this aversion
to connecting with nature if we don't support that generation and the next
generation because, as you said, like you and I, are from generations
who grew up and we have had outdoor experiences, we do have that connection.
So we have within us an innate, connection and a yearning to support
children to connect if the next generation and the generation after
that doesn't have that internal drive, then we're at a danger of not having
the passion or the drive to continue to connect the following generations.
I do worry about that quite a lot because you do see that generation,
as you say, coming through.
You know, here in Australia, we have the great outdoors.
There are those families and those children that do have those experiences.
You know, we've got four by fours by the dozen.
People are going to the beach, they're going into the bush,
they're having those experiences.
But I have also taught children in my class, here in Perth, we are
15 minutes away from the beach.
Who have never been, and that's sad, and that is actually quite shocking to me.
Like what?
You've never been to the beach.
It's just there,?
So I think this is something that is really profound because we're
seeing more and more mental health issues with children and yet we
know that the solution, the healing is right here on our doorstep.
It's just being outside in nature, which can really help so much.
I thought of a funny story actually when you were talking about the bugs.
I don't know if you come across it, but It happens so often where a child will
come to you and they need to go to the office to get some kind of soothing lotion
or something because they've been bitten
by
a mosquito or an ant.
Now when I was growing up if I had to go to my mum and say she'd
go just put some spit on it.
Seriously.
And we would just lick your finger and rub your saliva onto a bite.
And that would be that.
There would be no Stingoes or gels or sprays to do any of that stuff.
And so sometimes kids come to me and I go "just put some spit in it,"
So I'm just thinking, Oh my God, they'd probably go home to their
parents and go, Mrs Cottino said just to put some spit in it.
They're probably going to get a phone call to school to say what
on earth is going on here to show some more caring for my child.
But actually what we're doing is we're teaching them that, Hey
it's not the end of the world, you'll live
I just want to jump in there and say, I think there's a lot in that about
showing children that they are capable and that they have autonomy and that
they have the power within them to solve their problems, I love working with
Children conflict comes up all the time.
So one of the greatest tools that I've learned as a teacher is to ask
the question when a child comes up to me with a problem is, do you
need my help to solve this problem or are you just wanting to let me know?
Essentially, do you want someone to listen or do you want someone
to act with you or on your behalf?
Because often, I think, as adults, we have the best intentions at heart
and we want to support children, but we jump into action when maybe
that's not what they were asking for.
So sometimes with that insect bite or that bug bite or something
that's scratchy, Maybe it's just being a safe harbor that they
can say, ouch, this hurts, or I'm uncomfortable and that's okay.
And for us to acknowledge, yeah, that ant bite does make you uncomfortable.
That must hurt right now, but that pain will go away, that we don't need
to jump in and fix that straight away.
Sometimes they're actually just coming to let us know.
And have you also found that having the outdoors, that children, it
does make them more resilient?
Because at our school, for example, we put out a nature playground.
And what we discovered was that Kids were always, I tell you, the office
ladies must have a list from here to eternity for every child that comes
into that office for a band aid.
And what we discovered as soon as we put in the nature playground, is
that increased for a little while.
Yeah, because we're getting scrapes more, because now we had logs
and rocks and all these things.
But then what we were doing is if they did come out, I have a scrape.
We said, Oh, just go to the bathroom, wash it off.
It's all fine.
Look, obviously, if it was serious, we would attend to that.
I'm talking about just little scrapes that really don't need much.
And I think what's what it's done is it has lowered the amount of
children going to the office for Band Aids for just arbitrary reasons.
And it does really help to build that resilience in our children.
So nature has so many benefits, including building resilience.
So I, I think that's really important for our children, especially now
when we've taken away so many of the obstacles and we're wrapping them more
and more in cotton wool because we're afraid of the outside world and all the
bad things that could happen to them.
But we're also depriving them of experiencing things that could
really benefit them at the same time.
Absolutely.
And I think for me, that story, so our byline at Educated by Nature
is Resilience through Connection.
So, at our core, we are about developing resilience, and that comes through our
ability to connect with the natural world, with ourselves and with others.
And we're big believers on the essence of anti fragility.
That our Children need to be anti fragile.
So Jonathan Haidt talks a lot about anti fragility in his book, The Anxious
Generation, and the fact that for children to be, , anti fragile, they need
the opportunity to experience discomfort, to experience adversity, to experience, as
you were saying, those bumps and scratches and bruises, and that those things show
them that they are actually capable, they can survive those experiences.
Getting bitten by an ant, shows them that they can get through that, and leads
to a sense of more than resilience and robustness, it leads to anti fragility.
And, , it's like they used to say, you've got to be cruel to be kind or
tough, and I think sometimes I wonder whether that's lacking now, is that
our children don't have that mental toughness, that resilience anymore.
And I think there's really a need to get that back so that we can face challenges
with more courage and not as much anxiety, and so I
I believe that your programs like what you're offering and having that nature
space outdoors where children can, can connect with that and experience
those moments where perhaps there is a challenge and can learn to navigate
those challenges on their own.
I think that is a real
golden moment for children.
I think that is a real gift that we can give them.
Daniel, you know, it's not all unicorns and rainbows when we talk about
how wonderful it is to be outside.
Tell me what challenges you faced because in your programs that you're offering,
what challenge have you faced when you're integrating your nature based learning
into conventional education programs?
So in the work that we do directly with teachers in schools, I think one
of the biggest challenges is time.
Because our schools are so siloed, our curriculum areas are separated
so extremely that the amount of time allocated for certain
subjects or topics get so limited.
Whereas the beauty of learning outdoors, nature pedagogy, outdoor
classrooms, whatever term you want to apply to it is the fact that it can be
really well integrated, that there's the opportunity to learn through an
inquiry process in an integrated way that covers multiple learning areas,
multiple curriculum areas at once.
And so one of our biggest challenges is supporting teachers to see past
timetables that are set that separate learning area times and go here is an
opportunity that we can move outside and cover lots of different areas and topics
, through engagement with the natural world all at once.
I think that would be one of our, challenges.
And then linked to that, I think one of the biggest challenges
educators face is transitions.
Is moving into different spaces.
Is how do we get from the classroom to the outdoor space?
Uh, maybe our, our school that we are working with doesn't have a
suitable outdoor space on site, on campus, so maybe it's about how do
we transition to the beyond space, to the natural parkland or bushland
across the road or down the street.
So transitions become a challenge and it becomes a logistical conversation,
which has solutions and has answers, but it's supporting educators and teachers
to work in ways that maybe they haven't, had the need to work in before or think
outside the box in regards to transitions and movement and, ways to get to different
places efficiently, I think that's one of the big challenges we face.
I love how you talked about that integrating not just nature, but
learning across subject areas.
Because as you said, teachers talk about their workload all the time.
And I often wonder whether that workload isn't because we've created more
work for ourselves by, as you said, siloing our different subject areas.
Because, life is integrated.
We do not live in compartmentalized ways.
So for me, teaching should be integrated.
And that's my jam.
That's what I'm good at.
I rock at integrating multiple subject areas into one lesson.
And that is not only a time saver, but it also is more of an
authentic learning experience.
So I'm completely 100 percent with that.
And that's actually what I'm trying to do with Blooming Curious is trying
to say to educators, I can actually help you and show you how you can
make your life easier by integrating a whole bunch of stuff into one lesson.
Yeah, which is just and also so much more fun.
My goodness.
It's so much more fun.
And we have an issue where children can't see connections between
why do I have to learn this?
When am I going to ever need this in my life?
And it's because we're not connecting different subject areas so they can
see, Oh, okay, we're doing this because I could need it here or there one
day, or tomorrow for that matter.
Tell me what advice would you give educators?
in the real world that want to really integrate more nature based
activities into their teaching, but they face all this resource
issue and the curriculum issues.
What advice do you give at Educated by Nature, because you do the
stuff where you're training people.
So what's the kind of advice that you give educators when it comes to teaching in
a more integrated fashion , to get this cross curricular connection happening.
I think the biggest piece of advice that we can give educators is trust children.
And it can look, different in many different contexts, but I think,
one of the things that we want to encourage educators to do is stand back
and just watch, , Angela Hanscom is an occupational therapist from the States and
she's written Balanced and Barefoot, which is a fantastic book, a really easy read.
And I think it should be mandatory reading for all educators, not
just occupational therapists.
But she talks about stepping back and tuning in.
And I think.
When we give children the opportunity and we trust them to take a lead of
their own learning and we stand back and we watch, what we notice is that they
actually are incredibly capable learners.
They are incredibly capable at discovering, asking questions,
wondering, and going deeply with engagement in the learning process.
I think it's flipping that model that as educators, we
don't need to be as teachers.
We don't need to be the one doing chalk and talk or being the holder
of all the knowledge that we need to pass that trust over to the children
and work as a collaboration to access the curriculum that we need to cover.
But if we stand back and we just trust children, they actually will naturally
get to the learning that they need to with some creative backwards planning
and backwards designing and, input of some pebbles of wisdom along the way.
I think
I noticed when we were preparing for this interview, I asked you to
respond to some questions and you said a great teacher shows a child
where to look, but not what to see.
So I think that's where that comes in.
We're not that talk and chalk generation any longer.
We are facilitators.
So we're just showing them this is where it is.
What do you think?
What do you, what can you see in this?
How can you develop this?
How can you take this further?
How can you, write this sentence in a much more clear way or
in a more descriptive manner?
Things are changing and, the mental health and well being of children
disturbs me greatly when I see what's happening every day in classrooms.
And I personally am convinced it is because they're losing that
connection to the natural world and we're becoming more way more
obsessed and reliant on technology.
What's your view as a leader in the nature space, so to speak, on technology
in classrooms and how it's being used?
This is a big one.
And, going back to the book, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, and
actually the dialogue that has happened between Jonathan and Dr. Peter Gray
over some of the elements of that book.
So technology and by technology where we're obviously here talking about digital
technology, and screen based technology.
It's something that exists in our world.
We are utilizing the benefits of it right now by discussing and sharing information
and content through digital media.
So it's something that's not going anywhere and it's something that
definitely has positive elements.
I think it comes back like anything to balance.
That we need to make sure that we're not putting over reliance on digital tools
in our classrooms and for children, and we're seeing the opportunities
where we can get off screens and have that balance in our classrooms.
I think it's not about fighting against it and not having any of it
in our classroom experiences, but it's finding out when it's a tool
that is really useful and necessary.
, I guess, like any tool, it's about knowing not only when it's important
to use, but when it's important not to use it and acknowledging those things.
In recent times, I've just been seeing children absolutely, there is
no other word for it, but addicted.
It's like an itch that they have to scratch all the time.
I'm trying to say to them, look, It has its place.
It has its purpose.
You can use it to learn to investigate to read to find out but to use it aimlessly
just to sit on it and play a game.
I don't believe that that is doing our children any good at all.
And we know about all the research going into technology and its
effect on a developing brain.
And that's the part of it that worries me.
So, no, we can't take it away completely.
I'd love to ban it completely, actually, personally in early
childhood and then bring it out later because children are smart.
People say, oh, you've got to prepare them.
These kids learn it within, a few minutes.
It's not like us, I remember, getting a new gadget and we used to read the manual.
My kids never read a manual.
They just learned to do it.
That you learn on the go, so to speak.
Let's move on and talk to me about your upcoming projects
and initiatives that Educated by Nature are working on.
And one of the things that you are most excited about, cause I know you've just
been on your overseas trip, talking a lot about nature and children, I'm sure.
So would you like to share a little bit about that and some of the
initiatives that Educated by Nature is offering, not just educators, but
you also offer parents, workshops
, do you want to talk about
that?
Yeah.
. One of the programs and one of the projects that I'm really excited about
and that , we're really passionate about here is our, mentoring program and
our nature connection series program.
So we're working with a whole bunch of different schools, but also starting to
work more with organizations that can support us to be in schools that maybe
can't afford a long term program or project, because we know that budgets
in schools are really tight, but putting emphasis on the ability of mentoring and
walking alongside educators to support them to take learning outdoors because,
like, we were talking about at the start of the, discussion is that often it's
the adults that need a little bit of support themselves to feel comfortable in
these outdoor spaces, to feel comfortable with the strategies in which they can
implement nature based classrooms, nature pedagogy, outdoor classroom programs.
So our Nature Connection series is an opportunity for us to walk alongside
a teacher or two and their class.
Model and then also mentor them across like a five or six week process.
We're really passionate about that program.
And then another project that we're super excited about is we're starting
to work more with year seven and eight.
So, into high school and doing some work in developing adventure
playgrounds and remembering that teenagers still need to play as well.
And what are the play landscapes that they have access to in year
seven recess and lunchtime, what do their play spaces look like?
Because often in high schools, we move from a space in primary schools of having
lots of play opportunities of environments that are supportive of play to high
school environments that are paved areas with Um, you know, we're not going to
be able to have picnic tables or benches.
Um, or maybe the occasional table tennis table or basketball hoop.
So we're working with a school at the moment where we're developing an
adventure playground that is going to be a space where their year sevens can
go in and build and play and engage and still be children and still play.
So that's a brand new project that we're working on, but we're super passionate
about the way that that is going to grow.
That is super exciting.
And are the children getting involved in that as well with
you, the year sevens and eights?
Are they designing the space or saying what they would like in the space?
So it's not a playground as in it's not a design.
Um, it is a space, an adventure playground, so junk playground.
We bring tools, pallets, wood, rope, and we stand back and the children
are building playing exploring.
So what the landscape looks like is totally up to the children.
The students are the ones doing this project.
We're just enabling it to happen and standing back and supporting the
educators, the mentors and the school to understand the importance of it, uh, and
to essentially get out of the way and let
the students do their thing.
So you're essentially bringing loose parts to high schoolers.
And I think this would also be really important for boys,
especially for them to be able to do those kinds of physical things,
which are really important for boys.
And are you getting a lot of interest in that?
Because I would think that schools would be hopping on to that.
We have just started.
So we're working with one school at the moment, but our plan for next
year is , to launch that as a program that other schools can engage with.
That's really exciting.
I really, I hope that just takes, off like, great guns there for you guys.
So what about parents?
What if, you know, parents listening to this episode right now, what can
you tell them about how they can help their children or if children have
specific needs, even how can they help children with programs like you offering
at Educated by Nature or even just things they can do themselves at home.
Yeah.
So, we offer a school holiday program called Kin Village.
We also have a program called Kin Unplugged, and we've just launched
actually a school holiday program for teenagers, so if parents are looking for
an option for their children during school holidays, they can engage with that and
information about that is on our website.
We also have a whole heap of, video blogs and, uh, so the international
tours and engagements that we have with professionals from around the world, we've
done a whole bunch of the interviews and, and put those on our website as well.
So there's some snippets of advice and support for parents, but if I had to
give, parents one piece of advice in this video, it would be, trust your children,
and, provide them with the opportunity to play in ways that they remember
playing as children themselves.
So we talk a lot with parents about remembering what they did as
children and how are those things available as opportunities for
their children in today's age.
That's excellent advice.
Remember how you played as a child.
Couldn't be better than that, right?
Daniel, this has been really a fabulous chat the two of us together and I think
we have so much in common and it's just wonderful that we can actually bring this
to teachers and parents and I hope that people take away a lot of the advice that
you've given them today and I will place all the links for Educated by Nature in
the show notes so people can get it there.
Is there anything else that you would like, a parting message that
you would like to leave for people as we finish up this episode?
I think I'd just like to say that we need to work as a whole community,
parents, teachers, educators, children, politicians, policy makers, everyone
to protect and uphold children's rights to play and the importance of
connecting with the natural world.
Amen to that.
Daniel, thank you so much for being on Blooming Curious today.
And so that was Daniel Burton from educated by nature right
here in Perth, Western Australia.
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