A classroom without walls: New Zealand’s nature schools emphasise mud over maths
Ashton Wilcox, 8, points to a dead hedgehog snagged in the rocks of a stream at Battle Hill, a farm 45 minutes north of New Zealand’s capital city Wellington. “Look, its insides are moving” he says with alarm, examining the quills now colonised by maggots.
A teacher nearby gently advises Ashton not to touch the animal, then explains hedgehogs are a pest in New Zealand and that the maggots are breaking down its remains. Ashton watches a moment longer in curious horror, before bouncing back up the stream to join a group of excitable children who are feeding a writhing mass of eels.
Within two minutes, Ashton has had a tutorial in conservation, lifecycles and safety. It may be an unusual way to teach an eight-year-old, but this is no ordinary classroom. Ashton is attending Bush Sprouts nature school, one of a growing number of similar schools gaining popularity in New Zealand.
The children, aged between four and 12, trundle along to the working farm every week, leaving their home or mainstream schools to spend the day playing in mud, building campfires, feeding tuna (the Māori word for eels), whittling , trapping pests, planting native trees and learning how to become kaitiaki (guardians) of their environment.
Children cross a stream during a Nature School activity day. Director/ Kaiako, Bush Sprouts Nature School NZ Trust, Leo Smith, Penelope Toomath (4) and Reid Payne (6) look at eels in a stream (bottom)
In the morning, the children gather in a wool shed loft to set out their hopes for the day. “I want to go to the mud pit and find kōura [crayfish],” says Reid Payne, 6. “I want to eat some pancakes,” says Zelia McLennan, 9. “I want to do nothing,” says Kai Etuale, 5. Every wish is granted.
The formal structure of a mainstream classroom is put to one side, in favour of play and self-directed learning.
“It’s really child-led,” says the schools founder, Leo Smith, as she juggles interruptions from her walkietalkie and fields demands from a pair of children hoping to play a trick on her. Smith encourages children to challenge themselves outdoors and believes if they don’t have the chance to experience risk “they are not going to learn how to take risks in other parts of life”.
Often, it is the parents needing a gentle push. “But some of our families send their kids to us because they haven’t grown up outside and they aren’t comfortable themselves with risk – they know their kids can be themselves here.”
‘Collective responsibility’
Nature schools – sometimes referred to as forest schools or bush kindys – are cropping up around the world, including in the UK and Australia, and are often inspired by the outdoors culture – or friluftsliv – of
Scandinavia. Enviro schools, similiar to nature schools but more structured, are also gaining popularity. There are now more than 80 nature schools across New Zealand and a community of roughly 2,000 educators.
Proponents of nature-based education believe time spent learning and playing outdoors, in all weather, is one of the best ways to boost resilience, wellbeing and creativity in children. Research supports this, including evidence that nature school pupils experience enhanced motivation, improved social skills and academic achievement and a more developed appreciation for the natural world.
Locally, programme directors – including Smith – are taking a distinctly New Zealand approach with the inclusion of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge systems) to guide planting, conservation and guardianship of the environment.
Reid (6) cooks an apple on the fire. Lachlan (5) and Scarlett (7) with a chicken. Indi (5) holds a heart shaped leaf while Violet (6) looks on. Vicky Griffin makes a creation out of flax while Kai (5), Penelope (4) and Ayda (4) watch.
In 2018, Jenny Ritchie, an education professor at Victoria University of Wellington, co-authored a paper on early childhood learning in the outdoors, with a particular focus on how Māori worldviews and knowledge can give meaning and authenticity to a child’s experience of nature, within the New Zealand context.
“It seems to me it’s a birthright for children growing up in this country to be able to [understand] the ecologies within which they live,” Ritchie says, adding that learning the Māori names for flora and fauna can help children develop a sense of environmental responsibility.
From a “collective wellbeing perspective”, children attending nature programmes are growing up “with a disposition of caring for their environment”, Ritchie says.
For Smith, this collective care played out when 20 tī kōuka trees were cut down in an act of vandalism. “The children cried,” Smith says, “and then they decided … they wanted to plant some trees.”
After planting seedlings and placing painted rocks at the roots asking people not to hurt the trees, the seedlings were attacked again. Undeterred, the children replanted. “This was all them, it wasn’t coming from us,” Smith says, with pride.
‘We took the walls away’
As lunchtime draws near, one group of children ambles to the campsite to erect hammocks and gather wood for a fire, while another smaller group peels off towards the mud pit.
Reid leaps into the squelching pit, his green and brown camouflage soon indistinguishable from the mud that coats it. His face lights up with glee as he scrambles back up the ditch to hurl himself back into the mud.
“Reid is a kid that bounces off the walls … so we just took away the walls,” says his mother, Amy Toomath.
The six-year-old has attended Bush
Sprouts every week for a year, and is now accompanied by his four-year-old sister, Pip. Toomath believes it helps Reid better engage at school and broadens his approach to learning. “Not just reading and writing; learning is also pest control or how to forage for food,” she says.
Violet (6) Ashton (8) and Scarlett (7) play in the mud.
Emma Dewson brings her two children to nature school in an effort to emulate her own outdoors childhood. Already she is seeing her children’s responsibility to the environment flourish.
“They’ll go around the streets and pick up rubbish and my son insists we only have one car,” Dewson says.
“They’ll have to be the caretakers of the planet and we are leaving them with a broken one”, she says adding “the ability to cope is one of the best things you can teach your kids”.
In the meantime, the Bush Sprout children are having fun being muddy, wet, silly and loud. In front of the campfire, best friends Evie-Willow Alexander, 10, and Zelia are mixing pots of “pretend food” made of mud and plants. Both return an emphatic “yes” when asked if they look forward to nature school each week.
“It’s a really good place to come for your mind and to get rid of your thoughts,” Evie-Willow says. “And it’s nice to just play.”