Live Sessions List
Live sessions will take place throughout the week of July 14-18. Live session recordings will be available after conference week (July14-18) through July 1, 2026.
Sessions are subject to change.
NatureGuard: Early Childhood Programs and Insurance Insights
Presenter: Austin Braaten
Dive into nature-based early childhood education and insurance. Explore benefits, manage risks, and learn about tailored insurance solutions. Understand how to safely integrate outdoor learning while ensuring comprehensive coverage.
Keep the Spark in Nature-Based Licensed Programs
Presenter: Madeline Cole
Pulling from work at licensed nature-based sites, Maddie's workshop examines thriving with licensors. Participants view examples of creativity within licensing parameters. They practice thinking about their program from common licensing perspectives and workshop best practices to address concerns.
Ready to Make the Change--Now What?
Presenter: Debby Kinman Ford
This workshop will help you gather the practical skills needed to move your school from a traditional birth-5 program to a nature-based one. It will address atmosphere, curriculum, marketing, and integrating nature into your world. Both the overall programs and specific ages will be addressed.
Nurturing Resilience: How Nature-Based Education is Adapting to the Changing Climate
Presenter: Claire Underwood
This session shares findings from a national study on how nature preschools are adapting to the climate crisis. Participants will gain strategies for integrating climate-conscious policies and adapting practices to support the safety, well-being, and resilience of both teachers and children.
Diverse Voices, Richer Landscapes: Going Beyond the Image in Picture Books to Promote Equity in Nature-Based Learning
Presenters: Ranita Dawkins, Jennifer Stone, PhD
Nature-based education often uses picturebooks to connect children to nature. While diverse imagery is growing, the creators' voices are overlooked. This session highlights the absence of diverse authors, while promoting equity by considering the use of culturally rich stories for deeper inclusion.
Made in the Shade: How Trees and Temperature Impact Children’s Play and Learning
Presenters: Kirsten Haugen, Heather Fox, Alice Cohen
Explore how shade and surfacing affect local temperatures in children’s outdoor spaces, and how sun and heat directly impact their wellbeing, play, and learning. Using shade and temperature research and hands-on data collection, you’ll discover practical ways to enhance children’s time outdoors.
Crafting Beautiful Stories: Co-Documenting Children's Lives Outside
Presenter: Ron Grady
In this session, we consider how to craft beautiful, impactful stories of children's experiences in nature. We consider concrete practices to support educators in sharing the heart of their work and consider how this work is an essential form of advocacy for children and for nature-based work.
Building Climate Resilience Through Early Childhood Initiatives
Presenters: Vera Feeny, David Beard, Jen Salinas
Attendees will explore real-world examples and leave with actionable ideas to integrate local early childhood initiatives with climate resilience strategies. We will also highlight the newly launched national Outdoor & Nature-Based Early Care and Education (ONB ECE) Collaborative.
Creative Solutions for Nature Accessibility: A Facilitated Process for Navigating the Access Needs of Disabled Children in Nature-Based Settings
Presenter: Julie Nowak
Join this interactive session to learn a creative process for addressing the access needs of disabled children in nature-based early learning. Grounded in disability justice, participants will generate inclusive, adaptable solutions and build skills for creating supportive, equitable spaces.
Exploring the Need for African-Centered Curriculum in Nature-Based Education
Presenter: Charlene Favorite
An African-centered curriculum in nature-based education integrates African history, culture, and perspectives into the learning of environmental education, providing a more inclusive and culturally relevant educational experience for Black students, fostering identity, pride, and belonging.
Cultivating Partnerships for Inclusive Learning in Garden Spaces
Presenters: Emma Walter, Ann Halley
Participants will hear from the Chicago Botanic Garden Nature Preschool about its partnership with TrueNorth Educational Cooperative 804 in creating an inclusive classroom model. Presenters will share their experiences and inspire participants to create partnerships in their own communities.
More than a New Course: A Framework for Embedding Outdoor and Land-Based Pedagogies in Post-secondary ECE Programs
Presenter: Christine Alden
A Canadian framework, embracing Indigenous and Western worldviews, proposes how to transform people, practices, and philosophies so that outdoor and land-based teaching and learning are embedded in post-secondary ECE programs through policy, standards, curricula, faculty development, and resources.
Grounded in Science
Presenters: Kelsey Navin, Laura Seger
As science is increasingly challenged, we have the responsibility to cultivate scientific literacy. As a trusted source, we can share developmentally appropriate, empowering, and research-based findings on crucial environmental issues. We’ll focus on concrete ways to achieve these critical goals.
All Weather STEAM
Presenter: Nicole Dravillas Fravel
Got Weather? Learn how to use the natural elements of sun, wind, rain, snow, and ice for process-based art that helps preschoolers explore STEM topics. Bring a set of your favorite small loose parts, paper, and your imagination.
Rooted and Respected: Place-Based Learning for Sustainability Education
Presenter: Jade Berrill
Join for an interactive 'walking field trip'. Discover how your learning space can be transformed into a place to embrace learning about sustainability, respect, and reciprocity. Incorporating story, exploration, and activities this workshop will leave you feeling more rooted to your learning place.
“Tell Me a Story, Sing Me a Song:” Nature-Inspired Songs, Rhymes, Finger-Plays, and Puppet Shows to Share with Little Ones.
Presenter: Joanne Whitney
Babies and toddlers love to listen to and share songs and puppet stories with their caregivers. Come join, Joanne Whitney, a Waldorf, Reggio, and Forest School trained teacher for a joyful, informative "voices on" tutorial on singing and storytelling in the woods to delight our little ones!
Nature and Resilience: A Path to Empowering Children in Early Education
Presenter: Firdevs Burcak
Discover how nature supports resilience in children. This session explores the concept of resilience, risk, and protective factors, and the role of nature in fostering adaptability and coping skills. Gain practical strategies to incorporate resilience-building through nature-based practices.
Sustainability with Infants and Toddlers: Establishing Strong Roots in Practice
Presenter: Jayne Kinley
This presentation explores the question: How do you do sustainability with infants and toddlers? This session teases out existing knowledge within educators’ everyday practices, offers practical ideas, and discusses opportunities to embed sustainability in practices with infants and toddlers.
Deepening Phenology Practice in Early Childhood: Co-Inquiry, Reflection, and Action
Presenters: Abraham Underhill, Claire Underwood
Explore how to deepen your phenology practice and connect children to the changing world around them! Learn strategies for integrating seasonal observations, expanding nature access in urban spaces, and engaging children with the natural world through inquiry, community partnerships, and reflection.
Digging In: How Outdoor Loose Part Play Supports the Roots for Self- Regulation, Connection, and Growth in Young Children
Presenters: Jill Bienenstock, Margie Newlands
Providing children time and space outdoors with simple loose parts and tools promotes sensory exploration, heavy work, and problem solving. Learn how this supports children from infancy to school age with crucial foundational skills and cultivates a deep connection to themselves, others, and nature.
Learning to Love Insects
Presenters: Zachary Stingl, Madeline Beavers
Because insects make up to 80% of all living animals and are essential to every ecosystem, this session helps teachers feel comfortable with, plan for, and participate in insect-centered activities and lessons.
I Larva You: Building Empathy and Resilience Through Insects
Presenters: Anna Lewis, Sailhy Sanders, Marissa Camacho-Tarver, Marilyn Alvarado, Cristiana Garza, Becca Reeves
Wild Earth Preschool loves bugs and uses this interest every day. With our Playful Zoology curriculum, we will show how to develop empathy, resilience, and other social emotional concepts to backyard animals and to academic skills through open-ended child-led play.
Threads of Responsibility: Using Clothing to Teach Environmental Awareness
Presenter: Julia Billings
Our everyday clothing can be a powerful teaching tool. Exploring where clothes come from, their production, and their environmental footprint, helps kids connect the dots between the shirts they wear and global environmental issues.
#SEETHELEARNING
Presenter: Nicole J. Corbo
Educators, especially those coming from more traditional settings, can develop the ability to see and describe the rich learning happening during unstructured time in nature. This session will provide techniques and tools for observation, documentation, and assessment.
Modeling, Simulation, Data Analysis, Visualization, Abstraction, Decomposition, Algorithms, and Programming: How Nature Teaches It All
Presenter: Joanna Maulbeck
Participants will analyze outdoor play and its connection to the development of computational thinking. We will study how simple activities outdoors teach advanced skills of modeling and simulation, data analysis and visualization, abstraction and decomposition, and algorithms and programming.
Empowering the Youngest Learners in a Warming World K-2
Presenter: Janice Haines
K-2 Inquiry Guide: Empowering the Youngest Learners in a Warming World"" is a resource for educators, who themselves are grappling with climate change issues. They will take the role of facilitators and co-learners as the class works together to learn, critically reflect, and take action.
You Have the Power! Exploring Energy with Young Children
Presenters: Meg Gravil, Rachel Patton
Learn experiential activities to introduce basic concepts of energy with children. We will explore cross-curricular activities that experiment with water, wind, and solar energies, and discuss simple ways to assess children’s learning. You can make this abstract concept accessible to young children!
Growing with the Flow: Teaching and Learning with Hydroponic and Aquaponic Gardens
Presenter: Louise Ammentorp
This session will explore how aquaponic and hydroponic gardens are powerful tools for learning in P-3 classrooms and with preservice teachers. I will share insights and resources from a teacher PD initiative, including: setup, maintenance, curriculum and SEL connections, and book recommendations.
Into the Beyond - Exploring Beyond Spaces with Early Childhood and Elementary Schools
Presenter: Katie Krause, Janis Pierce
Join us for "Into the Beyond," helping educators bring learning outdoors. Discover site assessments, engaging outdoor events, and nature's benefits. We'll share lessons, materials, and how to use grant funding to replicate the program and increase access to natural spaces in your community.