Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators

by David Sobel

Overview

Childhood and Nature is a guide for educators looking to foster in their students a love of nature as well as an understanding of complex environmental issues. This second edition brings new material and fresh insights to David Sobel's foundational exploration of place-based education.

Sobel articulates seven design principles that teachers can use to build learning experiences: adventure, fantasy and imagination, animal allies, maps and paths, special places, small worlds, and hunting and gathering,. Pulling from recurrent play themes and real-world examples from educators, Sobel details placed-based projects and lessons for each principle. Students learn and develop vital skills through engagement with their local environments and communities. Miniature ecosystems in the "small world" of a sandbox, for example, can help children grasp larger, abstract ideas.

A timely and actionable resource, Childhood and Nature shows how centering the world around us in education can create a generation of nature students, explorers, and protectors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501778551
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	03/15/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David Sobel is Professor Emeritus at Antioch University New England and cofounder of the Harrisville Children's Center. Sobel is the author of Beyond Ecophobia, Place-based Education, The Sky Above and the Mud Below, and Wild Play.

Table of Contents

"Appareled in Celestial Light": Transcendent Nature Experiences in Childhood
1. Childhood and Nature Design Principles
2. Playing, Plotting, and Potatoes: Preschoolers Learning in the Garden
3. Taking the Classroom to the Forest: Forest Fridays in Vermont Public School Kindergartens
4. Applying the Design Principles in an Urban Early Childhood Center: Innovation at Velma Thomas Early Childhood
5. Being Hopeful in Spite of It All: A Return to Nature-based Education
6. Forts, Land Trusts, and Conservation Behavior: How Building Forts Leads to Environmental Behavior
7. Island Play: Disney World Is Like a Flea Compared to Whitehead
8. Valley Quest: Strengthening Community through Educational Treasure Hunts
9. Look, Don't Touch: The Problem with Environmental Education
10. Swimming Upstream against the Current: Changing the School Improvement Paradigm
11. Global Climate Change Meets Ecophobia: Developmentally Appropriate Climate Education
12. Place-based Education in Guilford, Vermont, 2005: Teaching Locally, Understanding Globally
13. Place-based Education in Guilford, Vermont, 2020: Still Going Strong
Finding the Good in the Pandemic: Reviving the Nature Study Movement

What People are Saying About This

Andrew Lindsey

For the last thirty years, David Sobel has provided the framework that allows educators to understand, incorporate, and enjoy the vast potential for child development that results from nature-based experiences. No one has more pragmatically braided contemporary education goals, children's wellness, and our existential longing to better care for our world.

Miriam Beloglovsky

Sobel's perspective is unique and brings an innovative way to create compelling outdoor experiences in education. Childhood and Nature provides us with a wealth of knowledge and research to ensure that every child has a robust opportunity to explore nature.

Kelly Feille

Childhood and Nature is an inviting text that helps connect the why of outdoor education to the how. Relying on children's innate curiosities, awe, and wonder, the design principles David Sobel presents allow educators to imagine ways to incorporate place-based learning into everyday experiences.