Nature Play in the Yarra Valley

Small nanny-share group on beautiful private land ten minutes from Yarra Junction.
Mixed age group from one - eight yrs old.
Every Monday from 9am - 12pm.
(Full days available on request)

Lunch provided, BYO water and snacks to share. Activities include nature walks, bushcraft, permaculture, cooking, collaboration, nature connection, and more.

What we reckon about childcare:

The activities will focus on learning through play, learning about plants and animals, sharing meals prepared together, and simple bushcraft activities such as making bush string and building cubby houses. The older and younger children will be paired in each session so that an older child has the opportunity to guide and mentor a younger child in a supervised activity, so that older children feel engaged and responsible, and the younger children receive attention and support from someone they look up to.

We are strongly influenced by Steiner philosophy and global Indigenous child-raising practices. We consider ourselves as part of the internationally growing ‘forest school’ movement, focusing on learning in and about nature, and following the guidance of the living, sentient world. We are both rewilding practitioners who integrate these animist principles into our work with children.

Between us we have many years of experience in childcare, school tutoring, outdoor adventure guiding for school groups, kids’ party entertainment, running all-ages bushcraft workshops, leading bush kinder groups, and a current enrolment in a Cert III of Early Childhood Education. We both have current First Aid Certificates, Victorian Working with Children Checks, and follow the 11 Child Safe Standards in our work. We welcome people from diverse background and strive for culturally sensitive care for children from CALD, BIPOC, and LGBT+ backgrounds.

We are highly influenced by books (which we also highly recommend) such as ‘Never in Anger’, ‘Hunt, Gather, Parent’, ‘Bringing up Bébé, ‘How to Raise a Viking’, and ‘No Such Thing as Bad Weather’, which all focus on traditional child-raises practices outside the Anglosphere. The main principle that underpins them all is the idea that children should be integrated into the lives of adults, so that they feel included, valued, and in harmony with those around them.

Having worked in mainstream childcare, we’ve aware that what we do will seem quite different, for those who are used to the sterile, over-stimulating, academically driven environments of an average daycare centre. But from the guidance we’ve received through academic research, personal experience, and ancient wisdom, we believe that our approach creates an experience for children to return to their natural sense of balance, belonging, and joy. Rather than some ‘new, weird, hippy thing’, we see nature-based childcare as a return to how people have lived throughout almost all of human history.

We’re happy to provide a service where parents are delighted to drop off their kids to enjoy some much-needed child-free time. Parents are welcome to spend the first day with or near their child to help them integrate into the new environment. Longer-term though we advise that children are encouraged to attend without a parent/carer, as we find that this makes the child more likely to socialise and cooperate with others, and enjoy a greater sense of self-confidence and independence.

Our core values:

·      A child is essentially a trustworthy person who wants to contribute to life.

·      As adults our responsibilities are to keep children safe, and to facilitate how they can make that contribution.

·      Children don’t need ‘attention’ so much as they need to feel meaningly involved in the daily activities of the home and community.

·      Children deserve to have time and space where they are able to enter into ‘flow state’.

·      Children deserve to engage in trial in error in manual tasks, and in relationships – we are always watching but don’t swoop in to “rescue” them if it’s an opportunity for them to learn self-efficacy.

·      Though being entertained has it’s place, rather than constantly stimulating and amusing children, we’re more interested in sharing time and space in a relaxed and spacious way.

·      We value being in companionable silence together, which gives time for internal processing, and tuning into the subtleties of experience.

·      To build a sense of belonging, children are guided to put the established rhythms of the group over personal whims, to consider the needs of others and the group as equal to their own, and to delay gratification.

·      Children have far greater capacity than they're given credit for, so we invite children to be co-creators and not just recipients of their experience.

Childcare groups are an amazing way to connect the community, to meet like-minded parents and carers, and to continue to grow a web of everyone. We both care deeply about the future and the people who will be the custodians of it, and we want to do what we can to make those future custodians feel as resourced, grounded, and loved as possible.

As environmentalists who’ve spent a lot of time learning about global Indigenous cultures, and we’re more and more convinced that how we treat children in the early years of life sets a precedent not only for how they treat others, but also how they treat the natural world around them.

We believe that early childhood development is potentially the biggest driver of the behaviour, mental health, and values of adults. We’re interested in how to create multi-generational communities that create a truly 'nested' environment for children (and adults) to feel deep and unwavering support throughout their lives.

Everything we do is guided by extensive evidence and we welcome any questions about why we do things as we do. Nature-based childcare is a very nerdy topic for us that we love talking about!

To book a spot or have a chat, please email me at leafy@leafy-adventures.com and we can arrange a phone call from there. Looking forward to hearing from you!