Wild Haven in Baltimore City Parks
Little kids should climb trees and catch frogs. Watch clouds and make mud pies. Taste wild mulberries and gather worms. Build forts and run like deer. These are things ALL children should be able to do, regardless of their parents' socio-economic status.
The Baltimore City Recreation and Parks department, in collaboration with Wild Haven, is opening the first 100% outdoor forest immersion program in Baltimore City at the Gwynns Falls Trail. This new program, Wildhearts, is modeled after European forest preschools where all of the learning - yes, ALL of the daily learning - takes place outside. Children ages 18 months to 5 years old can join us from September through May, just like a traditional preschool calendar year www.Wildhaven.us
Children develop crucial skills above and beyond the formally structured programs based indoors. They have time and freedom to explore, invent, create, build, experiment, make friends, and play. Volumes of research already demonstrate the significant benefits of nature-based learning. (Visit the Children & Nature Network's exhaustive research library to learn more! http://www.childrenandnature.org/research-library/)
Now we are bringing this incredible approach to nature-based early childhood education to Baltimore's amazing parks!
Our goal is to offer financial aid to 50% of the children who enroll. Right from the start, we want our program to be inclusive and accessible to the children of Baltimore City. But we need your help to make it happen!
You may already know that nature preschools and forest kindergartens help young children make deep connections with the Earth as they develop foundation skills for life-long learning. But consider that outdoor preschools also have the power to level the playing field, so to speak, where diversity and inclusion are concerned. Children gain appreciation and respect for living things as they explore the outdoors. They notice how diverse habitats, plants, and animals are interconnected and come to understand how people are part of this interconnected web. Like bio-diversity found in nature, human communities also thrive when diversity abounds.
We also want children to fall in love with nature in Baltimore City. After all, they will be the future stewards of this very park. If we want people who live in the city to cherish and protect our parks, we need to give them opportunities to make those connections in the beginning of their lives.
Nature preschools and forest kindergartens are for ALL children. Not just the select few who can afford tuition. We want to honor children from every kind of family by ensuring access to financial aid.
Another challenge for families in low socio-economic standing are the social justice issues that factor into high quality early childhood education. Early childhood educators are paid notoriously low wages when compared to other teachers at the same level of education and experience. To combat this issue, we are committed to paying our experienced master educators comparable wages to that of other professional educators (in public schools, for example) so they can earn a fair living wage. By doing this, we have to charge tuition to off-set the real costs of staff. This is the ultimate 'catch 22'. If we pay teachers fairly, tuition costs must go up, and may exclude families who don't have the means to pay.
We are hoping that this is where you come in!
We are seeking donations so that we can put dollars towards:
-Financial aid/scholarships for children in our forest preschool immersion program for children ages 3-5
-Financial aid/scholarships for children in our Little Wildhearts program for children/caregivers ages 18 months to 3 years old
-Gear and supplies for children whose families cannot provide it (EX. one-piece rainsuits for rain-or-shine play, waterproof mittens for snowy play, water-resistant backpacks, re-usable water canteens, etc.)
-Professional development funding for teachers to stay involved and aware of best practices in nature-based early childhood education (not to exceed 20% of the total donations)
We need donations now so that we know how much financial aid we can offer right away! The BCRP Wildhearts program has a target start date of September 2017, so the sooner we gather funds, the better!
There are many inequities in this world, and it's horrible to think that they begin at birth based on wealth (or lack thereof). We can't fix all the larger social issues, but we can create the expectation that all children should be welcome and able to experience a nature-based early childhood education from the very birth of Wild Haven within Baltimore City Recreation and Parks. Thank you so much for reading this information and for any donation, large or small, to our cause.
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."
-Anonymous wise person (and my dad)
