Wild Roots Early Learning Center
Unlocking Curiosity
About Wild Roots Early Learning Center
Wild Roots Early Learning Centre aims to provide a high quality, nature based program, enabling children to instigate, investigate, test, and maintain curiosity in the environment around them. Wild Roots offers play-based programming, with risky play, loose parts, and fewer plastics. This program views each child as an individual and great care is put into meeting individual needs while providing a safe, nurturing environment that promotes social, emotional, cognitive, and physical growth. The outdoor learning environment helps foster a healthy range of emotions, builds resiliency, and fosters a love for the natural world. Wild Roots focuses on guiding children to enhance their skills, build on environmental stewardship, support engagement with their peers, and become aware of their own potential.
Wild Roots emergent curriculum is designed to promote intelligence using personal interests and exploration , allowing children to excel and grow to their full potential
What really happens at outdoor preschool, do the children just play?
Children gain a deep sense of connection to self, nature, and community. Free play outdoors allows for more diverse learning styles, increasing confidence, resilience, awareness, and compassion.
Along with social and emotional awareness around inclusion, and cooperation, children will naturally become focused, relaxed, confident and engaged. The outdoors naturally provides an incredible setting for fine and gross motor development, physical health, resilience, and dexterity. Providing hands-on experiences in nature ensures confidence, patients, passion, broad thinking, and planning skills.
Emergent learning provides space for creativity, imagination, and problem-solving skills. Activities such as mud kitchen play, shelter building, small group play, loose parts play, gives children an amazing foundation of learning they will take forward in their lives.
About
Wild Roots is in Vernon BC on a quiet, dead-end road near Silver Star Mountian. The program mainly operates within a fenced portion of 5 acres in the rural area of the North BX where I live with my family (husband, 3 teenagers, 2 dogs, 2 kittens, and a bunch of chickens). I have a great love for the outdoors, depending on the season I use my spare time to bike, hike, snowboard, and do a bit of Xcountry skiing. I am a Christian who has a deep sense of gratitude for the opportunity to participate in the wonders of creation with children. My career has allowed me to experience many types of wonderful programming. However, the time I spent mentoring children in the forests of North Vancouver and Chilliwack instilled a powerful drive to develop Wild Roots (10 years in the making).
The main play area offers raised garden beds, chickens, flower gardens, sand play, mud kitchen play, and endless natural loose parts play. There are trails constructed throughout the 5 acres that offer safe passage to multiple forest classrooms, material for crafts and building opportunities, and routine nature walks. Although we strive to be mainly outdoors, there is a lovely renovated indoor space that meets all licensing requirements.
This program is designed and suited for children ages 3-5 years old. The director is a certified early childhood educator who understands the importance of quality early learning, and creating a safe interactive environment.
This program serves to connect children with our ever-changing environment while fostering a foundational love of community, sustainability, and self-worth. This school aims to be an extension of your home, developing and nurturing your child emotionally, physically, socially, and intellectually. Through leadership and self-esteem-building programming, the goal is to be kindergarten ready and environmentally aware. The play-based outdoor learning environment is conducive to creating lifelong learners who are hearty, resilient, and problem solvers.
