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About
Welcome
I'm glad you're here.
I've spent over thirty-five years in the woods with children — real woods, with mud and sticks and long stretches of quiet that most adults have forgotten how to sit inside. What I've learned in those years didn't come from a curriculum. It came from watching. From listening. From getting out of the way often enough to notice what children actually do when we let them.
I once watched a child make a small clay friend for a fading mushroom — because "it looked lonely." That moment taught me more about education than any textbook I've read. Not because it was cute, but because it was real. A child saw something suffering, felt something in response, and acted — with tenderness, with creativity, with complete seriousness. No one told her to do this. She simply met the world as it was and responded from her own deep sense of what the moment required.
That is what education looks like when you trust it to emerge rather than trying to deliver it.
I offer these pages first as a gift — to my own children and to all the dear young friends, most now grown, who have walked these trails with me. And I offer them to you, wherever you are in your own work with children.
If you're a parent wondering how to slow down, how to stop managing every moment, how to trust your child's natural capacity to meet the world — you might start with the blog. The essays there are personal, practical, and grounded in real moments from the trail.
If you're an educator looking for a different way to think about your role in the classroom or the forest — one rooted in presence, observation, and trust rather than outcomes and benchmarks — explore the resources and reflections on contemplative pedagogy.
If you're a practitioner drawn to the intersection of the Buddhadhamma and parenting — or simply curious about what thirty-five years of sitting with children and sitting with the Dhamma have taught me about both — the About page is a good place to begin.
If you're not sure — that's fine too. Look around. Follow what draws your attention. That's how children learn, and it works just as well for the rest of us.
What you'll find here is an education rooted in experience, not abstraction. It values presence over performance. Wonder over outcomes. It respects the rhythms of human development and takes seriously the idea that children are not preparing for life — they are already living it.
Come in. Stay as long as you like.
—Rebecca
Sections in this Website
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List
Exploring how children learn to exclude and label others as "one of those," and how educational systems suppress natural curiosity, movement, and diverse ways of learning.
Discover why "I'm bored!" is actually good news. This science-backed guide reveals how unstimulated time boosts preschoolers' creativity, brain development, and emotional resilience.
Children worked with clay as a bird gathered pine needles outside. Nests, worms, houses, and burrows emerged—gestures of shelter, repetition, and persistence carried in material.
A simple forest school lesson on bird alarms became a doorway into presence, perception, and pressure—spanning science, parenting, deep nature connection, and contemplative awareness.
When attention softens, the forest responds. Birds, breath, and baseline become a mirror—not of self, but of tone, pressure, and the wake of thought.
A tribute to Bev Bos and the living legacy of Roseville Preschool—celebrating trust, play, presence, and the radical act of letting children tumble freely into becoming.
A nature-based approach using curiosity, storytelling, and invisible guidance to foster deep connection with the land, self, and others, supporting cultural repair and renewal.
Exploring presence as relational, embodied, ethical, and cross-cultural—moving from technique to undoing, attunement, and mutual vulnerability with children and nature.
Presence shaped by outcome isn’t presence. Krishnamurti invites attention without identity, method, or purpose—challenging us to meet the child without bringing ourselves.
In the hush of the forest classroom, Emily discovered withered mushrooms and responded not with removal, but with reverence—sculpting clay companions to ease their solitude.
Though outwardly invisible to most people, for me these events can impact language, memory, and cognitive clarity.
Fiona meets clay for the first time. Through gesture and touch, she enters a sensory dialogue, revealing the depth of nonverbal learning and relational presence.
A glance becomes a blueprint as children design and build a car from stumps—merging imagination, collaboration, authorship, and spatial storytelling in an evolving outdoor classroom.
An invitation for teachers to reclaim their inner life, Parker Palmer offers a pedagogy of presence grounded in authenticity, integrity, and the soul of the educator.
Description: A playful ritual, repeated over years, transforms a forest boulder into a shared landmark of joy, trust, and community memory.
An invitation to dissolve inherited beliefs, teachings on awareness, authority, and the end of psychological suffering.
What becomes possible when schools center thinking as a shared, visible process—interpreted, remembered, and shaped in relationship?
Documentation as a tool for making group learning visible, co-constructed, and meaningful.
A journey into the philosophical heart of the Reggio Emilia Approach, exploring listening, research, and democratic education through Carlina Rinaldi’s nuanced and visionary pedagogical view.
A relational, child-centered philosophy of early education from Italy, the Reggio Emilia Approach honors curiosity, creativity, and community through project work, documentation, and a deeply respectful image of the child.
Reflects on risk, agency, and learning through the lens of Teacher Tom’s wisdom, honoring children’s capacity to navigate the physical world with courage and competence.
What does it take to raise resilient children? This post explores the role of nature, discomfort, and early freedom in shaping inner strength—from scraped knees to carrying their own water.
Tells the story of a child who valued real tools at school—only to be told he was wrong. A critique of standardized assumptions about learning and materials.
An invitation to rethink risk in childhood—how trusting children with real challenges builds strength, discernment, and responsibility, rather than fear or dependence.
A child kneels in stillness, pencil in hand, mapping bird language and wind. This is relational learning—seeing the invisible through Sit Spot, presence, and reverence for place.
The hike had been long. The children were hot, a little tired, and more than a little restless. No one asked for a story—but something in the air asked for a shift. So I waded into the creek, sat down on a smooth rock, and opened the book.
A tender portrait of emergent empathy and relational literacy, where a child's reading becomes an act of presence, not performance—honoring care beyond comprehension.
A quiet moment of a child reading to a sapling becomes a meditation on empathy, presence, and the unseen curriculum of relational, child-led learning in nature.
Children navigate a creek with curiosity and courage, revealing how unstructured nature play cultivates sensory awareness, problem-solving, and embodied, integrated learning beyond the classroom.
Children run for no reason but joy. In their motion, they reclaim learning as instinctive, embodied, and whole—beyond adult framing or institutional control.
Explores the principles of the Continuum Concept, contrasting traditional Western parenting with evolutionary expectations of closeness, responsiveness, and community-integrated childhood.
Guides families through creating a values statement that reflects intentional choices, not cultural defaults. Encourages clarity, coherence, and alignment between beliefs, parenting, and daily life.
Presents the principles of empathic listening as relational practice. Offers tools for presence, reflection, and attunement—fostering trust and emotional safety in both home and classroom.
Introduces a rhythm for compassionate parenting and teaching that supports emotional presence, repair after rupture, and trust in relational growth—rooted in nonviolence and mindfulness.
Explores how loose parts—natural or found materials—invite open-ended play, creativity, and exploration. Celebrates children's innate capacity to invent, construct, and express meaning through self-directed interaction.
Discover how a Danish mother’s forest walks sparked a global educational movement, reimagining childhood learning through nature, storytelling, risk, and child-led exploration across cultures and climates.
A field-tested mentor’s manual for deepening children's relationship with nature, offering stories, routines, and practices to awaken curiosity, quietude, and ecological belonging.
A bold challenge to conventional schooling, Free to Learn argues that children thrive best when trusted to play, explore, and educate themselves through freedom and community.
Reflection on Peter Gray’s definition of play, exploring how real play fosters autonomy, creativity, and deep learning through self-direction, imagination, and internal logic.
A comparative overview of three influential early childhood models. Highlights their philosophies, practices, and cultural origins, inviting reflection on what each offers to educators and families today.
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