Nature’s Way advocates for the right and essential need of all young people to experience the connectedness, collaboration, adventure, and imagination that come with nature play. Our wooded areas in front of the school are used by students in Lower Elementary through Adolescent Community and are home to a tree house with climbing wall, our chicken coop, and the Lower and Upper Elementary fort-building areas.

Across the globe, forts are a part of children’s experience in rural and urban settings. The dens constructed with scavenged and natural materials become shops, restaurants, junk yards, homes & club houses. To build them, children collaborate, haggle, argue, compromise, work hard, carry big loads, think together, plan, organize celebrations, and problem solve. They deal with principles such as scarcity of recourses and the common good. They practice concepts of loaning, beautifying, making rules and dealing with each other fairly. In these activities, they are engaging in a practice society and they work hard at it.

We believe the richness of these experiences teach lessons that cannot be learned as deeply by listening to a teacher, watching a video, or reading a book. The construction of private places is one of the ways that children physically and symbolically prepare themselves, in middle childhood, for the significant transition to adolescence.