Reclaiming Nature Connection Conferences

Reclaiming Nature Connection invites you to join in an exciting two full days of hands-on, research-based, and anecdotal learning. As always, the conference will be infused with songs, games, stories, and deeper nature connection.

Reclaiming Nature Connection is an annual, outdoor conference based on forest schools, wilderness awareness and early childhood education. Participants will be linked to a diverse group of outdoor educators. This conference is designed for beginners and experienced educators alike, as well as therapists, administrators, home school families, camp counselors, and parents.

Reclaiming Nature Connection provides an opportunity to set your watch aside and allow the leaders of the conference to hold time for you. The rhythm of each day is designed to move between active and contemplative learning, with a thematic thread running throughout. We will flow between lecture and hands-on components, weaving together our learning through a variety of approaches, with each new component building on the next.

Do you wish you had more tools for navigating challenging situations with children?

East Coast Outdoor Storytelling Workshop for Early Childhood Educators, Teachers, Counselors, Parents and Mentors

June 1-2, 2024

Earthaven Ecovillage
Near Asheville, NC

Reclaim How We Actually Learn Best. Join us, as Storytelling presenters Lia Grippo and Erin Dews take participants on a storytelling journey to develop capacities for using stories as effective tools for guiding, teaching, and deepening nature connection, in a workshop focused on the creation of stories in service of guiding and teaching young children.  In this workshop you will have the opportunity to learn how to shape and tell stories to help you navigate challenging situations. Whether you are experienced or a beginner, there is something here for you.

Develop storytelling skills to:

• Guide and enchant

• Teach, rather than preach

• Bring calm and wonder into a child’s day

• Foster attention, memory, imagination, and self discipline

• Creatively resolve problems and shift behavior

• Increase children’s empathy, moral fortitude, and emotional intelligence

This annual conference is a program of The Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers, co-sponsored by Earthaven Ecovillage's School of Integrated Living (SOIL).

Begin your weekend on Friday evening with a storytelling concert with conference favorite, Doug Elliott.

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Scholarships available
TO REGISTER FOR STORYTELLING CLICK HERE

PAST Workshops…

Reclaiming Nature connection
Fields of Play

March 2-3, 2024
Silverado Canyon, California   

cosponsored by Earthroots Field School

with Lia Grippo + Erin Dews
Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers

Join us at Earthroots Field School, as we travel together through the stages of play, deepening our understanding of why and how we humans play, when we’re young and when we’re not. Deepen your capacity for mentoring children and explore our role in supporting, nourishing, and protecting healthy play, a state of kinship, reciprocity, and learning.

With this year’s theme, Fields of Play, presenters Lia Grippo and Erin Dews will immerse participants in an experiential process that will reveal how humans learn best through play and by building relationships with one another and to the natural world. Since play is the brain’s favorite way to learn, joyful singing, games, and humor will be woven throughout our weekend in the spirit of the young child and young at heart.

This annual conference is a program of The Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers, co-sponsored by Earthroots Field School.

Our conference at Earthroots was magical! We played sticks in the rain, had stories around the fire, played in the woods, sang and blessed the glorious rain! Forest School Teachers are the Best company! Thank you Everyone!

Reclaiming Nature Connection Facilitators

Lia Grippo

Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers

Lia spent many of her earliest years in Riga, Latvia, foraging and fishing the nearby woodlands with her family. Lia has taught in a variety of settings, including small and large preschools, a Waldorf kindergarten, a parent cooperative, and wilderness programs. Lia is the founder and director of Wild Roots Forest School, a preschool and kindergarten roofed by the sky and carpeted with the living woodland floor, and co-founder of Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers. More about Lia …

ERIN Dews

Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers

Erin grew up freely exploring the pastures, creeks and high deserts of California's Eastern Sierra mountains. Finding her passion for teaching at a young age, she has had the opportunity to study and teach in a variety of early childhood education settings and as an instructor in ECE programs at Santa Barbara City College. She supported Wild Roots to develop and taught the kindergarten program in Santa Barbara and opened a sister Wild Roots Forest School program in Bishop, California for 12 years. Erin is co-founder of the annual Reaching Nature Connection Conference, Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers. She is a director C5 Studios Community Arts Center 501c3 and acts as a CASA(court appointed advocate for children in foster care. 

PAST EVENTS