Teaching children is a deep passion for Dan and the Return to Nature organization.
Young aventurers explore many different habitats including creeks and rivers, forest, gardens, urban areas, and meadows. Children learn survival skills in a fun and engaging way, such as shelter building, water purification, and tracking animals, as well as plant and tree identification. Classes also include time and practice to cook over an open fire and create nature based objects with plants gathered in our garden and woods.
All teachings with children strive to point towards global ethics, ecosystem value, conservation, and respect for the natural world.
Heres a look at some of the class topics we’ve held:
Foxwalking, Nature Observation, and Sacred Silence Practice – Understanding and practice ways and methods to enter wild places, observe with quiet sitting spots.
Shelter Building – Debris huts and other shelters will be constructed using what is available upon the landscape.
Firestarting safely – from primitive sticks to modern devices, learning to collect the proper tinder in the proper conditions, and getting a fire to stay alive and boil water.
Campfire cooking – Learning techniques to cook and prepare food right on a campfire in a safe way.
Purification and safety of wild water – Lessons on the importance of acquiring water, how to process and purify it safely, and the concerns with drinking contaminated water.
Foraging for Food, Medicinal Plants, and Resources – Looking at the landscape as a medicine kit, tool chest, as well as supermarket
Tracking – Exploring techniques and learning that everything that occurs gets imprinted on the earth, learning to discern these often overlooked messages
Sit spot – Learning how and when to stay still, practice invisibility, and ability to see animals without being seen.
Bird Language – Understanding that the bird songs that we here are different kinds of vocalizations from sedentary to alarm, discerning what they are saying.
