How this website came about!

In 2018, a group of dedicated nature educators from northern Ohio met up at the Nature Based Early Childhood conference and decided to join together on Facebook in order to keep in touch.

Simultaneously, I have been working on a way to meet up with educators like myself in Ohio. Through a leadership cohort with the Dayton based Partners for the Environment, I found myself in need of a project that would bring about change in my area. Spurred by this process, I was able to reach out to folks I knew in Southwest Ohio, who had been meeting for two years already. At this time we found out about the group in northwest Ohio and planned a meeting!

In this meeting, at the Cleveland Metropark's Nature Preschool at Rocky River Nature Center, we brainstormed potential goals, dreams, and excitement about the nature based ice movement as well as finding each other! A follow up meeting was held back in southwest Ohio at Learning Tree Farm as well. Meanwhile, a survey (found on the Join the Movement page), was also providing opinions from folks who could not be present.

Using all of this data, we organized the goals and interests-and voila! A website was born! We hope that this is useful to the participants in our organization as well as educators and parents who are searching for this type of education. All in this group are encouraged to add and contribute to this website. Big things are happening-no one in this group is short on vision-stay tuned!

-Meredith Florkey, Director and Lead Teacher at Learning Tree Farm Nature Preschool