Join our Exciting Symposium

Get instant access, earn a certificate of completion, and 10 hours of professional development hours...

  • Gain insights into nature play and how to bring this to children in your everyday encounters.

  • Learn how to invite and inspire children to connect authentically to nature.

  • Discover new perspectives, ideas, practices, materials, and resources that you can implement right away in your daily encounters in-person and virtually with children in your learning spaces.

Educational Thought Leader

Susan Wright

Susan brings a fresh perspective to raising children. With a focus on the well-being of children, Susan founded Nurtured Inspirations where she offers digital resources, courses, and mentorship for parents and educators who nurture, guide, and inspire children.

Susan shares over three decades worth of experiences from travels in Canada, USA, and Italy where she studies early childhood theory and practice along with explorations in the Reggio Emilia Approach, and her everyday classroom experiences as a teacher.

Working alongside children, their families, and educators from around the world, Susan’s philosophy of childhood has evolved into The Nurtured Inspirations Approach where she inspires everyday play, mindfulness, art, and nature to those who share their days with children.

Join Susan Wright

The Nature Aesthetic: Nurturing Children's Relationships To The Beauty Of Nature

  • Consider The Nurtured Inspirations Approach to nourishing children’s relationships and connections with the beauty of nature.

  • Discover encounters, proposals, and opportunities to invite children to a place of wonder, curiosity, discovery, and reflection about their relationships alongside nature and how their ways of being impact the natural world.

  • Reflect upon your own practice within your own unique context and begin to consider new elements, perspectives, and layers to bring to your own encounters in nature alongside children.

Educational Thought Leader

Michelle van Heugten

Creativity has always filled Michelle’s days with joy and wonder. With a love for visual arts, Michelle developed a passion for painting, printmaking, and pottery. As a graduate of the University of Windsor, Michelle is a certified teacher with over 23 years in Kindergarten. Michelle’s current practice reflects her own research alongside children with a focus on supporting children’s creativity and imagination through open-ended play and inquiry-based learning. A member of the Ontario Reggio Association (ORA) and the North American Reggio Emilia Association (NAREA), Michelle continues to dive deeper into the Reggio Emilia approach to learning and living by attending workshops, webinars, presenting, and through her own interconnected conversations and research with children.

Join Michelle van Heugten

Collaborations With Nature: Researching Children’s Wonders

  • Engage children in creative work based on their natural curiosity of the outdoor environment.

  • Build children’s connections to the natural world through inquiry.

  • Extend children’s wonders through their research of the world around them.

EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT LEADER

Sophie Anne Edwards

(she/her/settler) is a geo-poet, environmental artist and geographer. For almost twenty years she has engaged children and adults of all ages in land-based engagements, community-based research and ecological learning through the arts, by partnering with a range of schools, institutions, universities, and community organizations. The lead author of the two-volume Art of Land-Based Early Learning, and lead writer of Learning the Land: Creative Community Engagements, she has facilitated workshops, supported study groups, and given talks across Ontario for educators, parents and organizations. She has provided art workshops in schools and through after school and summer programs since 2002, for several years she led and mentored a team of artists-in-residents/atelieristas in the Rainbow District School Board, and has deepened her work in ecological research with children through her collaboration with Early Years Collaborations (founded by Sharon Speir). Co-authored articles with Sharon Speir and Julie Kelly have appeared in Innovations in Early Education, and the Journal of Childhood Studies, profiling water pathway research with children. Her environmental poetry has been published in numerous literary magazines, including The Capilano Review, Arc Poetry Magazine and Empty Mirror among others. She is currently working on a full length collection of poetry titled Interview with a River through funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, and a durational textile installation project that confronts the intersecting ‘quiet violences’ of environmental change and gender violence. She holds an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies (Laurentian), a Certificate in Creative Writing (Humber) and a PhD-ABD (Queen’s U). She is based on Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island) in northeastern Ontario.

Join Sophie Anne Edwards

Building ‘Relational Muscle’ Through Collaborative, Ecological Research With Children

  • Explore what Sophie calls ‘relational muscle’ in our human and more-than-human relationships, and consider how we can engender community building in our work with children.

  • Consider collaborative, process-based ecological learning and research through examples from Sophie’s experiences with children.

  • Reflect upon the important questions -- the change-making -- we want to move forward in our work with children.

EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT LEADER

Roberta Pucci

Roberta Pucci is an Atelierista from Reggio Emilia, Italy, and the founder of RobertapucciLab. Her work is nurtured and influenced by three main areas of her professional training: design thinking, art therapy and the Reggio Approach. From the early 2000th She holds workshops about the creative use of artistic, natural and recycled materials, especially for educators and teachers. She worked as atelierista in a preschool and at the Loris Malaguzzi Center of Reggio Emilia with groups of teachers from all over the world. Using her interconnected knowledge, she provides different kinds of consulting, seminars and collaborations, to make every person or group express their unique potential, that naturally leads to a more active, authentic relationship with the environment and with others.

Join Roberta Pucci

Hundred Languages To Dialogue With Nature

  • Achieve some creative tools to experience first-hand the exploration of nature through the “hundred languages” of Malaguzzi’s thinking.

  • Discover the role of relationship in every learning process and the importance to know the “grammar of matter”, in order to enter into a respectful relationship with materials.

  • Become more aware of connections between different fields of learning, as well as between beauty and learning.

Here's what's inside...

  • 1

    Welcome to Elements of Nature: Inspiring Children’s Creativity and Wonder

    • How to Navigate this Event, Access Your Certificate of Completion, and Leave a Review

    • A Welcome Message from Susan Wright

    • Your thoughts on inspiring children’s creativity and wonder...

    • Your Wonderings: A Preface to Our Encounters As Pedagogical Thinkers
  • 2

    Susan Wright ~ The Nature Aesthetic: Nurturing Children's Relationships and Connections Through Nature

    • Susan Wright

    • The Nature Aesthetic: Nurturing Children's Relationships and Connections Through Nature

    • Your Reflections

    • Discussion Forum

    • Let's get social!

    • Additional Resources
  • 3

    Michelle van Heugten ~ Collaborations with Nature: Researching Children’s Wonders

    • Susan Wright Introducing Michelle van Heugten

    • Collaborations with Nature: Researching Children’s Wonders

    • Your Reflections

    • Discussion Forum

    • Connect with Michelle

    • Additional Resources
  • 4

    Sophie Anne Edwards ~ From COVID to Community Building: Building ‘relational muscle’ through collaborative, ecological research with children

    • Susan Wright Introducing Sophie Anne Edwards

    • From COVID to Community Building ‘Relational Muscle’ Through Collaborative, Ecological Research with Children

    • Your Reflections

    • Discussion Forum

    • Subscribe to Sophie Anne's Blog

    • Additional Resources
  • 5

    Roberta Pucci ~ Hundred Languages to Dialogue with Nature

    • Susan Wright Introducing Roberta Pucci

    • Hundred Languages to Dialogue with Nature

    • Your Reflections

    • Discussion Forum

    • Visit the Roberta Pucci Lab

    • Additional Resources
  • 6

    Your Next Steps

    • Closing Remarks from Susan Wright

    • Before you go...