Here’s the webinar: Reimagining Traditional Games for Deeper Ecological Understanding, Connection, and Fun. It was originally presented as part of the Natural Start Alliance’s 2025 on-line conference “Rooted and Resilient” and was available at the Conference website from July 14, 2025 – July 1, 2026.*
The focus here is on specific games and art projects for teaching ecological principles, values and consciousness. Many of the activities presented are also included in my book Circling the Sun and Racing the Wind. Viewers are invited to consider a rationale for teaching that relies on active, sociable, arts-infused, outdoor games and projects – many inspired by N. American and W. European children’s games.
One of the main goals of this work is to inspire learning about ecological science and place-based natural histories not merely through ‘factual’ verbal descriptions, outdoor observations, and experiment, but also, (and this is especially crucial for young children) through participation in various art forms: creative dramatics, visual art making, music, poetry, storytelling, dance, and enjoyable, often child-directed, imaginative games. My point is that ecological knowledge and understandings should be passed along in engaging, non-aversive, ARTFUL ways. So much learning can be pleasantly and effectively transmitted when the content is linked and presented in conjunction with the values, capacities, and skills associated with art-making and art-receiving. Through such experiences, scientific understanding becomes ever more seamlessly woven into a context of creative agency, prosociality, proplanetary allegiance, and psychological health. Youngsters’ most life-affirming human impulses, senses, and intuitions can be reinforced by both the messages and methods of teaching and learning.
A related goal of both this webinar and the book, Circling the Sun, Racing the Wind, is to encourage teachers (and students) to design their own lively, sociable, arts-infused games and projects for ecological learning. It is my hope that this webinar and the accompanying materials will help catalyze your own work in this realm.
Thank you for your interest, and please let me know if you have comments or questions about this recording or the larger project.
*The Natural Start Alliance https://naturalstart.org is the Early Childhood Learning branch of the North American Environmental Educators Association (NAEEA) https://naaee.org.