S2E27: The Science Behind Wild Play with David Sobel

In this episode, we’re talking with one of the grandfather’s of Nature Play and Adventure Play, David Sobel, who gives us some great ideas on suggested outdoor activities for different developmental stages and also chats about some of his most recent research on the differences between children who attend indoor classrooms versus outdoor classrooms.

👉  David shares

• His story and what influenced his childhood and shaped who he is
• How he started his career and what he is working on now
• How to quantify vs qualify the difference between putting children in nature-based education vs indoor learning
• How the pandemic has affected perceptions about children learning in nature
• The relationship and correlation between childhood nature experiences and adult environmental attitudes and behaviors
• The scientifically proven benefits of nature immersion for children
• Advice on how to educate and communicate with parents and educators about risk
• The importance of teaching children to understand how to risk assess from a young age
• Practices for parents and educators that support childhood nature play and exploration
• Developmental parameters for how to think about engaging with nature at different stages

👉  Opt In
https://www.wildlingsforestschool.com/free-downloadables
https://kit.co/Wildlings

👉  Links and Resources

https://www.davidsobelauthor.com/
https://www.davidsobelauthor.com/davidsobelbooks
Book Recommendation: The Magus by John Fowles

👉 Guest Details

David’s writing has helped to shape the place-based education movement in the United States and around the world. He’s also a proponent of nature-based early childhood education. That means getting children outside, to play and learn in the natural world and in their communities.

David has worked with the National Park Service, the Children and Nature Network, numerous colleges and universities, a diversity of zoos and aquaria, nature centers near and far, independent and public schools in remote British Columbia and in inner city Boston.

He now lives in New Hampshire and is committed to cold water swimming, the exploration of landscape nooks and crannies and to joyfully embracing the gift of life on earth.

Wildlings Forest School Contact Details
Website
Facebook
Instagram
Youtube 

👉 Did You Enjoy This Episode?
If you enjoyed this episo

Welcome back to Raising Wildlings — where we explore raising brave, resilient, curious kids who feel at home outdoors.

If you're an educator ready to bring more nature play and child-led learning into your Early Years program, our Bush Kindy Professional Development Workshops are for you. You'll walk away with practical tools, risk-benefit strategies, and the confidence to take learning outside in a way that's safe, meaningful, and genuinely exciting for

You know this podcast is just a small part of what we do at Wildlings Forest School. So if you want to find out more about our range of programs for children, our professional development workshops for educators, our free downloadables, blogs or our online store, just head to wildlingsforestschool.com. It's all there waiting for you. Come and join the village.

Transcript

Nicki 0:41

In this episode, we're talking with one of the grandfathers of Nature Play and Adventure Play, David Sobel, who gives us some great ideas on suggested outdoor activities for different developmental stages and also chats about some of his most recent research on the differences between children who attend indoor classrooms versus outdoor classrooms.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Welcome to Raising Wildlings, a podcast about parenting, alternative education, and stepping into the wilderness, however that looks, with your family.

Nicki 1:11

Each week we'll be interviewing experts that truly inspire us to answer your parenting and education questions. We'll also be sharing stories from some incredible families that took the leap and are taking the road less travelled.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

We're your hosts, Vicki and Nikki from Wildlings Forest School. Pop in your headphones, settle in, and join us on this next adventure.

Nicki 1:35

Hello and welcome to the Raising Wildlings Podcast. I'm your host, Nikki Farrell. Today we are so very fortunate to be speaking with David Sobel, whose writing has helped to shape the place-based education movement in the United States and right around the world. He's a proponent of nature-based early child education, which essentially just means getting children outside to play and learn in the natural world and in their own communities. David has worked with the National Park Service, the Children and Nature Network, numerous colleges and universities, a diversity of zoos and aquaria, nature centres near and far, independent and public schools in remote British Columbia and in inner city Boston. But he now lives in New Hampshire and one of his favourite things to do is cold water swimming. But before we start, I want to tell you a little bit about a new recommendations platform that we've just started using called kit.co. We get emails all the time asking us about what tools we use or asking us for the name of a book that was mentioned here on the podcast. So we decided to put all of our recommended products and books, etc., all in one place. Now, full transparency, this is an affiliate program. So if you do click on a product and purchase it from our kit.co link, then we do get a small and I'm gonna say very small kickback. And we'd like to thank you in advance if you do ever choose to do this. If you hadn't noticed, we're going through a bit of a phase of trying to automate our business wherever we can. Because for an outdoor business, Vicky and I spend an incredible, ridiculous amount of time behind the screen. And the longer we spend behind these screens, the more we see and hear and answer the same questions, which is totally cool because we really, really love helping people out because we know ultimately that helping people out, especially adults, means that we're going to get more children outdoors. But it does take up a lot of our time, particularly when we're both trying to homeschool our kids. So we need to automate some of these things wherever we can. So a one-stop shop for recommended products where we get a small kickback for putting them all in the one place for ease of access for you all seems like a really good idea without us putting ads on our website or something like that that we would really rather not do. So anyway, from here on in, if you're looking for a book that you've heard on the podcast or a tool that we use in our programs or anything like that, you'll find them at kit.co, that's k-t.co forward slash wildlings. We'll be adding the link to all of our future podcasts and in our Instagram Link Tree too. So again, thanks in advance if you ever do use that. It just really helps us consolidate everything and automate everything. And you know, we eventually hope that the kickbacks will mean that we get paid for our time to do that. But now let's chat to one of the original Nature Play Warriors and advocates, David Sobel. Welcome to the show, David. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 4:31

It's great to see you.

Nicki 4:32

It's uh we're we're days and nights and weekdays and getting times mixed up. That was my fault. But um, it's 11 o'clock at night here, and you've just started work.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

Yeah, when when I got the invitation yesterday, I was trying to figure, I was trying to re-calculate in my head across the international dateline, and it was I couldn't quite do it.

Nicki 4:52

No, look, I I obviously couldn't either. I'm uh in my pajamas and ug boots under this, if I'm honest. So ready for the evening. So we're wanting to do something a little bit different at the start of our podcast. And David, you're the first person we'd like to test this out on. Would you be willing to be our guinea pig? And I promise it's nothing drastic. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 5:14

So excellent.

Nicki 5:16

See, he's a risk taker, I can tell. We're firm believers in storytelling as you are and placemaking. So we we think it helps us become and remember that we're all human and made of the same things and need the same things to survive. So instead of us introducing you, it's really simple, we'd like our guests to introduce themselves, but we're going to put a little spin on that. And we'd like you to tell us about the influence in your childhood, people, place, things that helped shape who you are and led you to your chosen career path, and even perhaps where you live now, if there was a reason behind choosing where you are now.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Well, I always say that I had um negligent parents when I was growing up.

Nicki 5:59

Um fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

You know, so my parents were divorced when I was young. I lived with my mother. My mother had a substance abuse problem. Um, and she would prior to that, she just was a kind of working professional. So she wasn't around much. Um, there were my grandmother was around, but she didn't really care. So basically, I had a free-range childhood. So I attribute my commitment to uh children and nature issues uh as a function of my free range childhood. And I and I lived on a beach um on Long Island Sound in Connecticut, and it was suburban but still a little bit wild. And so I had the ability to go off and be anywhere. Uh I spent a lot of time in salt marshes and in Phragmites jungles and in old abandoned farms and exploring the haunted house and the abandoned fields behind the haunted house. And so I was all over the place, and I feel like that's where I bonded with the natural world. So that had a lot to do with my professional commitments, I think.

Nicki 7:20

So if if you wouldn't mind, uh if you could let us know your audience, uh, what you're working on and essentially just retelling our audience what you're doing. And this is the first time we've done this. Usually I just go in and use your bio and spit it out. But we're just finding it so much more human for people to tell their own story. So perhaps if you could just go back and tell us about how you got into your career and uh what you're working on now.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

I started my career uh being trained as an elementary school teacher, and then from that I started a little uh preschool and kindergarten in Harrisville, New Hampshire. That was in 1972, almost 50 years ago now. Um so I spent three or four years as a basically preschool kindergarten teacher. And then uh it was a lab school for Antioch University, and so I gravitated into teacher education uh with a focus on developmental psychology and environmental education, and essentially I did that for about 45 years. Um, it was a it was a good thing for me. It allowed me the freedom to do other things than do teacher education and uh allowed me to write and continue to work with kids in different ways. And now I am mostly retired and still doing research on uh nature-based early childhood education and still writing different kinds of things. Currently, I'm working on a on a back roads biking guide to New England.

Nicki 9:08

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

So that's that's what's kind of keeping me busy now. Um most recently been involved in uh research on comparing children in uh nature-based public preschool programs versus traditional preschool programs in the same school district in Minnesota. I don't go there very often, but I'm working with somebody there. And that's been it's really interesting to try and quantify some of the benefits to young kids that we talk about all the time. Uh, we talk about them in qualitative terms, uh, but we're trying to figure out how we can quantify the difference between what happens if you put your kid in a nature-based preschool program versus a traditional preschool program.

Nicki 9:55

Oh, I think our audience would love to hear more on that. Are you able to expand more on that for us at all? Or too early?

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Yes. So uh we've been in this line of research for about the last eight years. And the focus question has been to respond to a question when parents ask, well, this looks great, but what's gonna happen when my kid has to go to public, you know, conventional kindergarten or conventional first grade? Right? Is my kid gonna be ready? So what we have found is that and using traditional metrics for literacy and math, there's not much difference in whether a kid goes to a nature preschool or a traditional preschool. So, in other words, all that time outside doing free play doesn't affect their development in terms of literacy and math. What we're now looking at more closely is concepts of resilience and executive function, because the early childhood world is somewhat pivoting to realizing that the development of resilience and executive function in early childhood is more important and is a better predictor of long-term success than early literacy than early literacy and math. So we just did a study this year during the pandemic, um, where the teachers assessed children on um uh resilience factors. We used a traditional uh early childhood metric, and teachers in the beginning of the year assess their kids using this metric, and then at the end of the year they assess the kids. And so the data looks like the children in the nature preschool had developed many more and higher resilience factors than the children in the traditional preschool. Most interesting because it happened during this uh time when there's a lot of stress. So resilience is essentially children's capacity to respond to stress in appropriate ways. And it looks like there's a significant difference in how the young kids develop, the nature preschool kids develop resilience factors. The more interesting corollary to that is that we wound up actually dividing these teachers up into three different groups. The nature preschool group where the kids are outside, you know, 75% of the time, the traditional group where kids are outside, you know, maybe 10 or 15% of the time. And then there was a what we called a nature light group, teachers that were kind of in the middle, where the kids were outside, you know, 33 to 50 percent of the time. And so the results actually look like they go across a continuum. Most benefit for kids that were in the nature preschool function, some benefit uh for the kids that were in the middle group, and less benefit for kids that were traditional. So it really does look like there's um there's a direct cause and effect relationship, potentially a cause and effect relationship between outside programming and development of resilience factors.

Nicki 13:23

I'm not surprised. We um we went into lockdown again. Gosh, was it last night? Last night we're only three days at the moment, so it's very short so far. But we were in the forest at the time when we got the news with the children, and they didn't have a care factor in the world. They were too busy, very present, having fun.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

So, where are you located, Nikki?

Nicki 13:43

We're in the Sunshine Coast in Queensland in Australia. So it's uh we're we're and most of the country's gone into a lockdown at the moment, some short, some long, um, for a very tiny amount of cases, but I won't get into that at the moment. But um our programs are closed down. So I can't wait to see your research. Because anecdotally, and I know it's anecdotally only from my perspective, uh, it's it does. It makes our children far more resilient. It makes them calm, it helps them distress. I can see it every day that we work down there.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Yeah, and it's been interesting in the United States to see how much the pandemic has increased the understanding that having children outside is valuable. So lots of early childhood and elementary programs moved kids outdoors to limit the uh viral transmission. And then they got kids outdoors and they realized oh, oh, it's happening.

Nicki 14:44

There's less behavior problems.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

And there's less there's less behavior problems. Staff are less stressed. And we can actually teach math and reading and writing out here.

Nicki 14:55

So there's got to be silver linings, doesn't there? So let's continue on with that. Um, would you like to talk a little bit about ways and practices that parents and educators can support childhood nature play and exploration so that we can reap those benefits of children having connection with nature while they're outdoors?

SPEAKER_02 15:15

Yeah, well, the first thing parents can do is conscientiously cultivate the child's relationship with the natural world starting from you know toddlerhood. We have a 16-month-old granddaughter and now a four-month-old grandson. Uh, but with the granddaughter, the parents have been exceptionally conscientious in terms of regular outdoors time. And the dad takes uh Greta, who's the granddaughter, to a nearby stream, basically on a daily basis. And she plays in the gravel on the edge of the stream and in the water. When she's here, my wife has her constantly outdoors and mostly in the yard at this point. And so it's clear that this child is not fearful of the outdoors at all, uh, prefers being outdoors, and is uh starting that early process of bonding with the natural world. So for older kids, you know, I'm always encouraging parents to find nature preschools as an opportunity for their children and encourage them to understand that no, this is not risky. No, uh, this is not gonna, uh this is not detrimental in any way. In fact, it's beneficial and will make their children happier, healthier, and smarter.

Nicki 16:44

Can you talk to us about the the differences you see in children that are exposed to nature? I shouldn't say exposed. I don't even like that language, connected with nature on a daily basis compared to those that are Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Well, the uh for one, you know, there's a lot of good research on physical development, right? So children that spend time in natural settings as opposed to indoors or even as opposed to being on playgrounds, uh, the kids that are in natural settings are much more physically active. And so it's it's gonna turn out. I don't know that there's good quantitative research yet, but those kids are gonna have better physical development. So even just in the course of a year, there have been studies that show that kids that spend time in natural settings compared to playgrounds or indoor settings, have better sense of balance and better coordination. And so much of early childhood development is about the physical development and the development of coordination and balance and uh you know aerobic capacity. And nature preschools are a good counterpoint to the obesity epidemic that's kind of emerged around the world as a function of kids becoming little couch potatoes. Um so physical development should be clear that everybody thinks that that's a great idea. Um, there's the whole uh the whole bonding with the natural world in early childhood and elementary years is clearly related to the development of environmental behaviors and values in adulthood. There has been comprehensive research on that correlation. Um, so if you want your kid to be environmentally conscious and uh behave in an environmentally conscious way, the bonding with the natural world is valuable. And then there's that whole sense of what we've just been talking about is resilience and executive function, the capacity to make decisions for themselves, appropriately assess risk, be able to self-uh soothe or take care of themselves during times of stress through uh engaging with the natural world. That's another thing that's going to be beneficial.

Nicki 19:07

Yeah, there's just there's so many benefits. How do we speak to parents and educators about uh risk? You know, that's I'm definitely one of the reasons people, or people, some people choose not to come to our programs, but we're very open about what we do. We do fire, we do knives, we do all of the things in the safest way possible. And our injuries, I'm an ex-high school teacher. I saw far, far worse injuries on the school playground in high school children than I do down with our kindy age children in our forest. So, how do how do you do you have any advice for us about how we, I don't want to convince how we educate people about the benefits of risk?

SPEAKER_02 19:52

I think the big turning point for me, I think I owe this to Claire Warden, um, was when I started to understand the whole risk-benefit analysis function. So many behaviors are inherently risky, but they are also beneficial. So, what we tend to do as parents is only assess the risk and not trying to assess the benefit of the risk. So the analogy I always use with parents is you have your child playing soccer or football. There are lots of inherent risks in having a child play soccer or football. But what you've decided here is that the benefits, the physical development, learning team sports and sportsmanship, all those things outweigh the risks. So therefore, you're going to allow the risk here because there are benefits that develop from it. So you have to have the same attitude of a risk-benefit analysis towards children being in a program where they're learning to use knives safely or they're you know climbing trees safely. Is that yes, there is some risk, but there are lots of benefits, and the benefits outweigh the risks. If you put this in the context of all the things that they allow their kids to do on a daily basis, right, it's they will understand or potentially start to understand that the risks, the mild risks are worth it. There's a term at the at a botanical garden that runs a nature preschool program in the United States, they talk about safe danger. And I really always really liked that term. So that what we're advocating for is safe danger. And you know, without any risk, there's no learning.

Nicki 21:44

Yeah, this is a hundred, absolutely. And I think we see that again as a high school teacher. I've spoken about this in the podcast before, so I won't harp on about it. But the resilience levels in our teenagers, the anxiety and mental health issues is there's this gap that seems to happen between early childhood and then high school, where they've had they're expected to make this giant leap, but they've been given none of the tools or the time to be independent and test out these risk-taking or decision-making tools for themselves. Every decision's made for them, you know, and the risk taking is prohibited. So, how do they learn these things until we throw them a set of car keys and some friends?

SPEAKER_02 22:25

I wrote a chapter, a chapter in one of my or an article in one of my books. Uh this book is called Wild Play, Adventures in the Great Outdoors is about, is entitled Assessing Ice. And it was about Uh one winter when my daughter was right around 12 or 13 years old, when um we had an early freeze and no snow. And so usually what happens is all the lakes and ponds freeze up, and there's about a week of good ice skating, and then it snows, and then there's no ice skating anymore. This year it froze up and then it didn't snow for about a month. So we had this unusual opportunity to actually go and skate on probably a dozen different ponds and lakes in this area. And it was an intention of mine while we were doing this to teach her about assessing ice. Because, you know, ice skating early in the season, there's a there's some significant risks involved, right? I.e. falling through the ice and into freezing water. So um, but unless you were willing to assume some risk and learn how to measure risk, then you couldn't skate in these interesting places. And so it was this very conscious training on my part to get her to understand that some risk is appropriate, too much risk is not appropriate. There are some times when it's good to say, okay, we're going to try this, and sometimes to say, you know, no, this is way too risky. We're not going to do it. And I knew that it was, or I hoped that I was preparing her for the risk assessment of, you know, when some kid's drunk and says, you know, I'll give you a ride home, you know, you can say, you know, thanks, but not tonight.

Nicki 24:26

Not many risk benefits to that one.

unknown 24:29

Right.

Nicki 24:31

I feel like some of our sporting cultures do that really well here in Australia. So surf life-saving or nippers, we call them here, when we they go in and it's it's a real community and real team sport, and they go in and they assess the surf and they learn about rips. And as they get older and they progress, it then becomes their turn to help coach the younger ones on the same thing. So I love that about some of our team sports and cultures, yet, other ones, it feels as if the coach makes all of the decisions. So I'd love to see more of a progression of youth mentors coming up in our in our sporting ranks and not just captains and whatnot. But yeah, I it's it's great to see in Surf Life Saving, but it's missing. I do feel like that gap's missing.

SPEAKER_03 25:15

Yeah, yeah.

Nicki 25:17

Would you can you talk to us more about wild play and and perhaps how we can engage with nature at different stages with our own children?

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Yeah, I'd love to do that via uh story rather than via a higher order, right? So one of the so uh this again comes from the wild playbook. One of the things uh that I challenged myself to do when my kids were young, between about you know three and 13, say, was to always be willing to respond to the daddy tell us a story uh request with a okay, I'll do it. And it was in the beginning, it was really hard.

Nicki 26:04

Saint David.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Daddy tell us a story, right? It was like, oh no, I'm too tired. Okay. And then part of that was trying to have the stories respond to the significant events that were happening in their lives at that moment, or in within the past week, or that kind of thing. So one story I like to tell is when my son woke up in the middle of the night one night, he and I were in the same room. We were trying to break him from uh sleeping in the same bed with his with his mom and I. And um, he wakes up and he's he's absolutely uh scared. Uh, you know, deer inside, deer inside, right? He's screaming. And so he had had this dream about a deer coming inside, and it was really scary for him. And so the next day, uh, when it was kind of story time, I told a story about a deer, a little boy wakes up in the middle of the night, he's really scared, the deer comes inside, the deer is uh quietly comes over to where he's sleeping and says, you know, come on, get on my back, I'll take you for an adventure. And the deer is is very uh friendly and um uh soothing. And so he takes the boy off. They go into the woods. He it's a father deer, actually, uh, you know, a stag that had taken him out, takes him the boy gets to play with the fawns in the woods. Um, and then the mother deer brings him back and puts him into bed. And so this was all part and parcel for me of trying to, in storytelling and in all the other stuff that we were doing, uh, develop this kind of friendly friendly relationship between flora and fauna and the kids.

Nicki 28:00

I love that.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

And so that and the storytelling was a really integral part of that. And I often tell parents that if they uh the one thing that they should really work on is developing stories that are uniquely based on their own family experience and preferably involve uh the natural world as the context for the story. Uh, because it's great in terms of creating a kind of sense of family coherence and uniqueness, and it's one of the ways in which you develop the relationship with nature.

Nicki 28:39

And and language is so important. It's a bit of a joke here in Australia that every animal here tries to kill you, but even bad humor aside, there is that negative undertone to it, obviously, that really sets our children up to be frightened of them unless they do have an adult that has the is really positive about these critters and the flora and fauna. So we often have children coming down into the forest, and you know, we we do our snake stomp and we're checking around. And there are some that are frightened because their parents are frightened and they haven't formed this positive storytelling. There's not been any positive stories about these creatures, it's always scary for them.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

So I really love that that's in this other recent book of mine called The Sky Above and the Mud Below, which is about which is a collection of basically articles by early childhood educators around the United States that are trying to naturalize their programs. There's one article about an early childhood program in Alabama, where the where there are lots of poisonous snakes. And so one of the programs that they did was to do a fan, they do regular, it's either monthly or quarterly family programs, you know, where the kids and and the parents come in the late afternoon or evening. And they did a snake program with the parents where they were passing around different, you know, passing around different non-poisonous snakes to help the parents get over their fear of snakes.

Nicki 30:17

We do the same thing and for the exact same reason. And I can't tell you how many parents have come up to me and said, thank you for curing my snake phobia. That it's yeah, because like you said, they've they've not had that opportunity either. So until they see it and feel it and have their own store, positive stories to tell about it, isn't it? That we carry that fear. I'm not sure we'd be ready for crocodiles or jellyfish yet, though. I'm not sure how we do that. Sharks.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

But it's that also accentuates the point that what you're trying to do in programs is not just provide a natural world experience for the child, but you're trying to change the family culture. Because really, if you want kids that are going to be, you know, bonded with the natural world, you have to change the culture because they spend most of the time with their parents. So you want, I appreciate programs that spend a lot of effort on uh family and parent and family engagement. There's another program in Santa Barbara, California, where uh it's a program that mostly works with foster children or children at risk, and they uh often do a family camp out weekend. And and that's a program that's mostly serves Latino Latino um parents. And a lot of those parents and grandparents and caretakers have never camped out, right? And so it's the first time they're ever actually having a sleeping under the stars experience. So same idea.

Nicki 31:55

I um camped in a swag for the first time since I was a child. We we camped a lot as kids, and we were thrown in the swag and left to build our resilience, and we did. And it was the first time in probably 20 years that I slept in a swag under the stars. We we tent and we and we travel and whatnot, but gosh, that nostalgia and that feeling of being under the stars again was I was so grateful for my parent to my parents for giving me that opportunity as a kid. Yeah, it was to be feel safe and secure under the stars. I don't I think a lot of us don't ever have that opportunity. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

I have a favorite, another favorite story from that book. There's a uh a nature, uh nature preschool program in um Victor, Idaho. This is uh so this is kind of in the mountains, right on the western side of the Tetons. So um Forest Wilderness, this little town of Victor, Idaho, you would assume that it would be really easy for them to take the kids outside and have a nature playscape, but it's not. So they have to put the kids on a bus once a week to take them to the national forest. And in the place that they are in in the national forest, it's possible, sometimes likely, that they're gonna encounter either bear or moose. So they have to have uh they have to have big animal drills. So what do you do when the big animal shows up? And then and so then when the kids are back in the classroom, they have to do a little work, a little drawing worksheet to illustrate uh the rule or the situation that they learned about when they were out in the forest. And so there's a great graphic illustration of a child illustrating the big animal drill, and there's a teacher and there's a child, and the big animal that is in the picture is a unicorn. And I love saying that I love I love it that there are still places where children can encounter unicorns in the woods.

Nicki 34:05

And you know what? I bet they're going in there imagining that they're just just waiting to stumble across a unicorn. That's exactly I love that entrance into a forest with children when you know they're this high and they're looking up at that canopy and the wonder in their eyes. And you can only imagine what's going on in their brains.

SPEAKER_03 34:24

Right.

Nicki 34:26

Now, to wrap up, we have got some rapid fire questions. You're ready for them.

SPEAKER_02 34:33

Yeah, they I looked at those questions. I'm not sure I'm ready for them, but I'll try.

Nicki 34:38

And that's why we have to make them rapid because some of them are a little hard. So, what's your favorite book of all time and why? Or because I know that's very difficult, it's like picking a favorite child. What are you currently reading?

SPEAKER_02 34:50

Yeah, my favorite book of all time is probably The Magus by John Fowles. And um I've always been disappointed because I've always been I've been looking for a book that engaged me as much as that. And um, I've never found it.

SPEAKER_03 35:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

And so it doesn't have anything to do with kids in nature.

Nicki 35:14

Sometimes we need that escape.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

But it does have to do with a young man on a Greek island and getting wrapped up in this incredibly complex, strange, not understandable uh theater of uh the absurd. And it's all designed by a puppet master that's essentially trying to educate him about what virtuous living is about. But the intriguing part to me was the was the mystery of uh uh the natural world and the landscape and him getting wrapped up in it. And so it actually contributed to the fact or the practice, this was in relationship to storytelling, that we constructed uh adventure theater activities for my daughter's birthdays that often involved, you know, mysterious creatures in the woods that she had to encounter and interact with.

Nicki 36:21

That sounds fantastic. I have to say that question is really for selfish reasons. I've got some of the best book recommendations from asking it. All right, number two, I've switched this one up too. Where was your favorite childhood nature space growing up? Out of you mentioned some at the start, but did you have one that you know if you'd had a bad day that you would go to as a child?

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Um, the place that comes to mind is what I refer to as the mica mine, the mica mine.

Nicki 36:49

So the glittery mica mineral?

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Yeah, mica the mineral. And it was um, if you walked down the beach from where we lived, there was a a kind of a seawall of cement, but then behind it was this all these chunks of really large rock. And there was lots of mica in those rocks. And so I spent a lot of time by myself collecting mica, and I had my own little mica collection. And of course, I was always looking for the biggest sheet of mica that I could find.

Nicki 37:23

It's something we're just bower birds at heart, aren't we? Shiny shimmery.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

The bower birds actually try and use mica.

Nicki 37:31

I don't they like shiny things, shiny and blue things. So it'd be it would be interesting to find out. I'll see. I've got a friend that's knows a lot about birds, obviously.

SPEAKER_03 37:43

Right.

Nicki 37:43

All right, this one's our loaded question. If you had to choose just one thing to change about the education system, what would it be?

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Yeah, I I would change the amount of time that is dedicated to outdoors learning. And um so we've been there's a lot of work that this group of uh Antioch University faculty members and colleagues at work in different schools and settings around New England are uh focused on right now is how to translate the push to outdoor learning and the development of outdoor learning facilities that happened at schools to try and figure out how to make that continue or persist into this next year and subsequent years in schooling. And so uh there's a lot of interest. We're starting to try and convene professional learning communities of principals and school superintendents that have this disposition and create support groups so that they will uh have a group that you know helps them uh work together to figure out how we're gonna make outdoor learning a priority.

Nicki 39:01

Any tips there for for people listening that would like to uh give their principals a little nudge in the I was gonna say right direction. My bias believes the right direction. How do we change the system?

SPEAKER_02 39:15

Yeah. Um I mean, one option is to actually provide them with concise versions of the literature that now says that outdoor learning is valuable and um will not compromise uh children's academic performance. And there are a lot, there's a variety of those things that have come out. There was a great Frontiers in Psychology article that looked at all the different research on nature and learning and synthesized it. And that's a really good article to give to school leaders. Um, and then there's some other simpler one and two page things. The other thing is to organize parents to demand this kind of commitment. So we've got a handful of examples of schools where there was a prominent nature preschool, and then the parents were sending their kids into the public school system. And they said, We how about we really love this nature preschool? How about nature kindergarten? So it was a district, a school district in Michigan that we documented where the school leaders saying, Okay, we'll we'll try this nature kindergarten stuff, and then um, you know, they were going to offer one section of it, and instead they had to offer three sections because there was that much parental interest. And then nature kindergarten led to nature first grade, and nature first grade led to nature second grade. And there have been similar things going on in New England elementary schools, so it's parents organizing parents to say, hey, this is what we want.

Nicki 40:52

We just need more squeaky wheels, don't we? That's squeaky wheels, you know, that they we might not want to be. And I think sometimes I don't think it's a God complex like we have sometimes with doctors, but there is this similar, almost childlike fear of going in to see the principal at your school and asking them for something, I think, as a parent. And I think it'll it will take parents to really push back and and demand it. But you said it's at nature preschools are doing it successfully and we're seeing the benefits, and then our parents have got nowhere to send them here with with similar similar benefits or similar programming. So yeah, if you take one thing from this podcast, everyone, it's it's be a squeaky wheel. David said so. And to finish up, where can we find out more about your work and your most recent book, David?

SPEAKER_02 41:45

Uh the my I have some web pages that are at Davidsobel Author.com.

Nicki 41:52

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

There are a lot of my articles that you can read there and then links to all the books.

Nicki 41:59

And send to your principal's parents.

SPEAKER_02 42:02

Right.

Nicki 42:02

Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on and for uh working out the time zone and just being here and giving your time. We have a really great um childhood mentor here called Maggie Dent, and she talks about lighthouses. And I think the people we have on here are not only lighthouses for me personally, but for the community that's listening. And then, like we said, we might encourage two squeaky wheels, and that passes on, and you know, that could be whole classrooms of children. So it can sometimes be thankless work, I know, doing the same old chat sometimes, but we do really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 42:40

Good.

Nicki 42:42

Excellent, thanks so much. David is one of the original Nature Play grandfathers. He's been teaching, educating, and researching the benefits of Nature Play longer than many of us listening here have been on this earth. So for me, it was a real privilege today to chat with someone who still wholly and solely believes in the benefits of their work after so long. And we here at Wildlings wish him nothing but the best for his, I was gonna say retirement, but he's certainly not quite retired. And aren't we lucky? Because what you didn't hear in the interview is that he fell off of a ladder a few days prior to this interview and quite badly injured his hand. So I'm wondering if he's probably better off back in the classroom continuing to lead our future educators back out into nature. We should all be so lucky to have a mentor like that who, even in his retirement, is jumping on podcasts like ours to help continue to spread this message to get more kids outdoors. I just I just am so grateful that there are people like this, you know, the the lighthouses that when we spoke to Maggie Dent about at the start of the year, these people that continue to light the way for us and our advocates for our children. So a big thank you for David. It feels really apt after our chat with him to suggest that maybe you'd like to head to our website and download our free 30 days of adventure play printable at wildlingsforestschool.com forward slash free dash downloadables. It'd be really nice, I think, if we could help continue David's incredible legacy and you know, at a minimum, get our own children outdoors more often. You can tag us and let us know how you're going with your 30 days of adventure play on Instagram. We really do love sharing what our Wildlings families are getting up to all around the globe. Until then, stay wild.