Today we’d like to introduce you to Michelle Barton.
While homeschooling her 4 daughters for 20+ years, Michelle used the natural world around her family as their classroom. With over 17 acres of field, forest, and stream as well as multiple farm animals to care for, the girls grew up learning and playing in nature, forging a lifelong love of the outdoors.
Once all of the girls were grown and starting families of their own, Michelle began to wonder about the possibility of starting a Forest Kindergarten to bring nature’s classroom to other children. With much research and study, Outdoor Woodland Learners was born! Michelle’s heart lies in guiding children to express their sense of wonder and imagination with the natural world. Her hope is that by using the forest as a classroom without walls, she can help children to follow their individual curiosity and to fall in love with nature.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Starting a new business is never easy, and this was no exception. Some of the biggest struggles included convincing my friends and family that what I was proposing was something that people would be attracted to. That it was a program that was needed in our area.
I needed the help of all of my family in order to get the business name and mission out into the public eye. Social media is not one of my strong points, but thankfully I have wonderful daughters and their husbands/boyfriends that were all able to help me design a website and brochures and Facebook pages!
Also, just getting our land ready for what we needed was/is so much more than I thought it would be. When I first began thinking of a Forest Kindergarten and Nature School in our woods, I envisioned bringing children there as it was. Then reality set in and I realized that we needed to take down a lot of trees that were leaning, make a Campfire circle area, set up and emergency shelter (our tipi) and get a porta potty! I dream of one day having a yurt as well as a shed too.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We are a nonprofit organization that believes in nurturing the deep and inherent bond between child and nature. This is accomplished through programs offering unstructured free play in nature, as well as outdoor experiential learning designed to develop an intimate, personal connection to the earth and its inhabitants. Our goal is to encourage exploration, learning, and wonder by providing opportunities for creativity, cooperation, imaginative play, physical strength development, mental strength development, and love of the outdoors within our natural world. Organic learning through nature’s classroom creates happier, healthier, smarter, inspired, earth-minded children.
At Outdoor Woodland Learners, our goal is to provide programs for children from walking age to 11 years. These programs provide opportunities for exploration and experience in the natural world. We are outside in all safe weather where we witness firsthand how plants and animals change and adapt to the seasons. For our older kids, we teach survival skills such as mapping, navigation, fire lighting, and hazard identification.
We have programs for homeschooled students ages 6-11, we have Saturday programs for children from 3 – 11 years, we also have a parent/caregiver and child class for families with children that are walking to 5 years old, and we have a preschool alternative program 2 days a week for children 3-6 years.
As the world around us seems to become a more sedentary society, our goal is to re-introduce children to the beauty of nature. For our older kids, we want them not only to learn names of trees and insects, how to identify clean water, and how to safely light a campfire, we want them to play and run around and makeup games and just use their imaginations. We feel that this kind of play is lacking in today’s children and we find that when they are allowed the freedom to do this in nature, they can’t wait to come back the next week to finish their game!
What were you like growing up?
I grew up with 2 brothers and a neighborhood of children that played outside until the street lights came on. We had a small patch of woods that we enjoyed playing in and often pretended that we were like the Ingalls family or in Land of the Lost! I was very much a tomboy and enjoyed all that the outdoors had to offer. I had my own subscription to Ranger Rick Magazine and you could often find me in the neighbor’s fields with my binoculars looking for birds and butterflies.
I spent my childhood summers on the ocean. My family had a houseboat and we used it as a cottage. The beach and marshes were the greatest areas to play in and discover all kinds of new things! I would love to someday be able to live near the water and bring another version of our Outdoor Woodland Learners to the beach!
Contact Info:
- Address: 38 Algerine Street
Berkley. MA 02779 - Website: http://www.outdoorwoodlandlearners.com/
- Phone: 508-783-3282
- Email: outdoorwoodlandlearners@gmail.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/outdoorwoodlandlearners
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/outdoorwoodlandlearners
Image Credit:
Stacia Chen Photography
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