Nature Immersive Experiences…

Honeymyrtle Nature Immersive Play offers short or longer sessions of bush adventures, nature activities, storytelling, free-play with natural resources and loose parts, dramatic play, music and quiet moments of contemplation, playgroups for families and workshops for adults. We now also offer parties for children 2-7 – a simply natural experience of nature-based ativities, play, circle games, the child’s very own birthday story and a healthy morning tea or lunch.

Get in touch with Sally at honeymyrtle@gmail.com to discuss a session of play, holiday care, parties, excursions, incursions, consults or workshops!

At Honeymyrtle, nature-immersion is not merely taking indoor activities outside, but experiencing and appreciating all it has to offer, in all weathers. We walk in the local bush, noticing seasonal changes and the effects of a storm in Autumn or a heavy downpour in Spring. We are reverent, filled with wonder and open to all experiences. Rather than the educator being the instructor, providing children with all the answers, we revisit phenomena over time, never losing the sense of curiosity that comes with limitless potentials as the children hypothesise…

Nature Immersion - Nature based learning

Outside play in the garden is a new adventure each day with a landscape the children can shape, providing opportunity for climbing and clambering, balancing and swinging, crawling through and wriggling under – all vital movements for developing both balance and ‘proprioception’ or the awareness of one’s body in space where the constant interplay between information receptors and muscle contractions ensures the body remains where you want it to be. Children also learn to take risks that are designed ultimately to keep them safe as they develop a keen knowledge of their abilities and feel confident and supported at the moment they are ready to take (perhaps literally!) a developmental leap.

The natural resources and simple wooden toys that we use last longer, are repairable, or replaceable with a trip to the beach or bush and so counteracts the ‘throwaway’ culture that plastic items are part of. Children care for and respect our toys, knowing that someone has put skill and love into making them.

The outdoor environment stimulates imaginative, dramatic and healthy social play – giving time for children to fully develop characters or roles that have a need to be played out for healing or understanding , allowing them to be processed and fully assimilated. Outside, the use of tools are negotiated and personal space claimed and infringed with children learning valuable lessons about articulating their needs in constructive and socially acceptable ways.

Circle time, play times, story, meals and rest are woven into a natural and harmonious rhythm that allows the child to breathe in and out, with transition verses and songs bringing security and confidence. Language is developed through rich integration of rhymes, verses, songs and finger plays as well as the story told by memory as a puppet play. The rhythmic repetition of Morning Circle develops imitation and attentive listening skills, concentration and the will whilst experiencing fun and joyful activity. Story telling builds empathy, shapes cultural context, and helps children to know their world and where they sit within it.

Activities, songs, stories and festivals reflect and celebrate nature’s beauty and cleverness in the seasonal cycle of growth and renewal. In this way, children are intimately acquainted with the natural world, appreciating their own uniqueness and beauty; they learn to care and respect the land and the peoples who have been custodians over millennia. They see themselves within the greater context of the earth that provides for them – we grow and use food from our garden, collect eggs daily from the chickens that we feed and care for and explore the local bush, reflecting on who has stood here in this wild place before us.

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