How Nature Nurtures Spirituality: Invitations to Stillness

By SERENA L. KROMBACH | Sideways School

The natural world offers endless opportunities for play, and it’s through play that children learn. When children are given the freedom to follow where their curiosity leads, they’re active, moving and thinking, linking body and mind as they do the hard work of building new understandings of their world. When the period of free outdoor play is long enough, however, I’ve noticed that children occasionally, spontaneously, pause and step away from the action.

I see them respond to some element of the landscape and its living things as an invitation to stillness, to mindfulness, to focus:

A child settles on branches angled just so to support him to rest head on hands in silence.
As she marvels at a dragonfly that found her leg to be a resting place, a child stills and her attention sharpens.
Boulders bordering a pond call a child to scamper from one to the next, requiring deep concentration to balance his body and thus focus his mind.
In the curve of a tree base, a child finds a nook that cradles her body and gives solace to help her recover from a slight.

In these moments, children are discovering how much of a piece they are with the

natural world, how well it fits them and offers just what they need. This discovery is spiritual development in action! Nature offers the opportunity for spiritual growth just by being there; and given the time, children will take it. Educators lucky enough to have access to natural spaces might might bring their students outside for a directed science lesson. But when educators incorporate into their teaching periods of unstructured play in nature, they give children so much more: the chance to find their place.

Serena L. Krombach, MA, MsEd, is the founder and lead educator of Sideways School, a program that supports social-emotional skill building through child-led cooperative play and exploration in nature. Her work with young children is informed by principles of progressive education and recent research in child development, as well as her experience teaching in inclusive early childhood classrooms. Learn more about Sideways School at sidewaysschool.com, or email serena@sidewaysschool.com.

How Nature Nurtures Spirituality: Invitations to Stillness

By SERENA L. KROMBACH|Sideways School

The natural world offers endless opportunities for play, and it’s through play that children learn. When children are given the freedom to follow where their curiosity leads, they’re active, moving and thinking, linking body and mind as they do the hard work of building new understandings of their world. When the period of free outdoor play is long enough, however, I’ve noticed that children occasionally, spontaneously, pause and step away from the action.

I see them respond to some element of the landscape and its living things as an invitation to stillness, to mindfulness, to focus:

A child settles on branches angled just so to support him to rest head on hands in silence.
As she marvels at a dragonfly that found her leg to be a resting place, a child stills and her attention sharpens.
Boulders bordering a pond call a child to scamper from one to the next, requiring deep concentration to balance his body and thus focus his mind.
In the curve of a tree base, a child finds a nook that cradles her body and gives solace to help her recover from a slight.

In these moments, children are discovering how much of a piece they are with the natural world, how well it fits them and offers just what they need. This discovery is spiritual development in action! Nature offers the opportunity for spiritual growth just by being there; and given the time, children will take it. Educators lucky enough to have access to natural spaces might might bring their students outside for a directed science lesson. But when educators incorporate into their teaching periods of unstructured play in nature, they give children so much more: the chance to find their place.

Serena L. Krombach, MA, MsEd, is the founder and lead educator of Sideways School, a program that supports social-emotional skill building through child-led cooperative play and exploration in nature. Her work with young children is informed by principles of progressive education and recent research in child development, as well as her experience teaching in inclusive early childhood classrooms. Learn more about Sideways School at sidewaysschool.com, or email serena@sidewaysschool.com.