At Carrie Murray Forest Preschool in Baltimore, early childhood education meets the great outdoors

When 4-year-old Ravi, a student at a Baltimore nature preschool, saw a balloon floating across the sky recently, his first thought was one of concern for the birds.

“He said‚ ‘Oh no, Mom, I’m scared,’ and I said, ‘Why are you scared?’ and he said‚ ‘What if the balloon pops and a bird eats it and gets sick?’” Kristin Sternowski recalled.

Sternowski found an outdoor preschool for her son after her family reconnected with nature during the COVID-19 pandemic. She attributes Ravi’s curiosity to his time outdoors, and his kinship with insects and animals, to his education at the Forest Preschool at Carrie Murray Nature Center in Southwest Baltimore.

“It’s this totally different understanding of how we impact the Earth and how we need to protect the Earth,” she said.

In an age of rapid technological advancements, statistics show the amount of time children spend outdoors to be dwindling. Attempting to bridge the gap, a group of child care workers is integrating nature and education into the outdoor school in the city.

Monica French, Mepi Neill, and Monica Wiedel-Lubinski, the founders of Irvine Nature Preschool in Owings Mills, started the Forest Preschool in February 2018 at the Carrie Murray Nature Center.

They sought to bring a nature school to the city for families in need of full-day child care programs and they believed people shouldn’t have to travel to give their children outdoor schooling.

The preschool is licensed by the Maryland State Department of Education and operates under Baltimore City Recreation and Parks, according to the city agency’s public information officer, Kevin Nash. It started as a half-day program and became a full early childhood education school in 2019.

Since the preschool opened five years ago, Wiedel-Lubinski has moved on to found the Eastern Regional Association of Forest and Nature Schools. French, a former teacher at the Irvine Nature School, and Neill, who worked at the Downtown Baltimore Child Care center and the Bowdoin College Children’s Center in Maine before joining Baltimore Recreation and Parks, serve as the Forest Preschool’s director and assistant director, respectively.

French and Neill modeled the preschool after European forest kindergartens and pulled from Montessori school philosophies in creating a classroom that uses the woods to teach fundamental language, science and math skills.

The preschool is in Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park in the largest urban old-growth forest — over 1,200 acres — east of the Mississippi River, according to Carrie Murray Nature Center’s website.

Children explore engineering by building forts with branches and logs, learn biology with insects as inspiration and start to count and identify colors with what they find in the forest.

“Being outside is a really easy way to meet all children where they’re at,” Neill said. “Even if we’re just reading a book, even if we’re just eating a snack, we do it outside so that it helps children become more comfortable outside and develop meaningful connections with … being outdoors.”

Neill hopes the students’ bonds with nature will last as they grow, resulting in environmentally conscious adults who feel a responsibility to limit pollution and preserve green spaces. She said the preschool is helping raise the next generation of “environmental stewards.”

In addition to learning about the environment, research has long shown that being outdoors or learning in nature promotes social development, academic achievement and physical activity.

A 2018 study of elementary students published in Frontiers in Psychology compared outcomes from identical lessons taught inside and outside. It found that teachers were able to go twice as long without needing to interrupt instruction to redirect students after outdoor lessons.

One parent, Vira David-Rivera, said she had some reservations about starting her daughter, Ami, at the Baltimore preschool at 18 months. But she has since seen positive changes for Ami, now 4 years old.

“She started the school not talking and by the end of the year, she was incredibly verbose,” said David-Rivera. “She wants to experiment and try things and I think it’s been incredible in fostering her independence and supporting her in growing.”

The day starts at 8 a.m. in the outdoor classroom. Children roam freely, with supervision. They paint and draw and learn from teachers, who have daily rituals, like a morning greeting song, although lessons depend on what students find in the forest.

On morning hikes, students observe plants and insects that pique their interest and teachers build thinking skills by asking questions about their finds. Compared with indoor teaching, minimal planning is involved for French and Neill, who draw on their students and the forest to guide their lessons.

“You don’t have to come up with all these different lesson plans: Learning is emergent and it happens with nature,” Neill said. “All the things that teachers have to go and prep [indoors], you can take outside and the lesson unfolds on its own.”

Ages at the preschool range from 2 to 5 years old. Barring inclement weather, all learning takes place outdoors.

Since starting the preschool, French says she takes life more slowly and looks more carefully at the world around her. After a day of teaching, she goes on walks to learn about nature herself.

“We feel it as adults — when we’re feeling so clogged by the world and everything is so stressful — and we’re recommended to get outside and get into nature, because it’s healing,” French said. “These children have the opportunity to fall in love with learning in a school setting out in nature every day. It’s a beautiful marriage of what can be.”