Rooted in Community
Why a Nature-Immersion Program in a Walkable Neighborhood?
Families often ask: “What does ‘nature immersion’ really mean in a city neighborhood?” Here’s how to think about it along with why so many children thrive:
Daily exposure to green spaces supports whole-child development: physical, social/emotional, creative.
Access to nearby woods, gardens, and urban green zones means children become comfortable with movement, exploration, risk-taking, and wonder. These are skills that will help them across settings.
The walkable neighborhood means families are part of the rhythm: children arrive on foot or bike, share the sidewalks, learn about the community, strengthening links between home, school, and neighborhood.
Because our community is formed of parents, teachers, and neighborhood families, children learn that learning and community live beyond the classroom walls, shaped by the streets, trees, and shared outdoor spaces.
In our mixed-age, nature-immersion setting, children explore stick-building and creek adventures. They share space with toddlers playing in sandpit “nature kitchens.” While older children revisit familiar areas and ideas that foster cross-age mentorship, a sense of belonging, and connection to a larger community.
Our outdoor classroom.
Our Outdoor Program
We propose re-contextualizing nature learning. We walk towards equitable early childhood learning and community. We expand access to nature while protecting our own health and the health of the children enrolled.
We are an outdoor program nestled in a small, but vibrant neighborhood. We center ourselves within the community using a place-based model.
Open air and education go hand-in-hand.
Our Outdoor Play Yard is unique in the local playground landscape. It features plenty of construction materials for young builders, climbing structures, spaces and “loose parts” for dramatic play as well as nature discovery. We complement this with neighborhood walks which support literacy, math, science, and geography.
We will be outside, every day, in every weather.
Learning and Risk Benefit
We know that learning springs from hands-on experiences and a reflective process of trial and error, success and failure.
We offer opportunities, planned and unplanned, for the children to experience first hand intellectual and physical risk, holding to the adage that the strongest tree in the forest is the one buffeted by the most wind. In this, the children are charged with assessing their own risk while being monitored by the adults. They gain a better understanding of danger versus safe exploration, and incorporate this knowledge into their approach to learning and expression of that learning.
Materials
The Cooperative School was established in 1942. We have curated, crafted, and collected unique educational manipulatives that support and cultivate learning using all senses and the whole body. These are changed out regularly over the course of the school year.
our Teachers
Our teachers are experts in early childhood development. They hold education degrees and have completed continued education courses in human growth and development and pedagogy. The teachers create the curriculum for both the parents and the children.
This background along with years of direct experience with children and parents means that your child’s first school experience will be one of partnership informed by research and best practice.