About Us
OUR TEAM
Belva Stone
MEMBERMiss Belva has been working with children for over 20 years. She worked as a private nanny specializing in children aged 0-5yrs for many years before becoming a certified early childhood educator. In 2010 Miss Belva accepted her first preschool teaching job at a traditional Montessori school. She worked there for 4 years before shifting directions into outdoor education.
Along with being the Director of Muddy Boot Prints, Miss Belva is the chair of the SAP Non-Profit Board (that oversees the Saplings Independent Nature School) and the OELA Non-Profit Board. The OELA is a non-profit dedicated to supporting outdoor educators in British Columbia as well as supporting getting outdoor education licensed in BC. Belva routinely offers presentations and workshops about outdoor education to local colleges and universities throughout the year. Belva has been an active community member working towards getting outdoor education licensed in British Columbia since 2016. The progress is slow and steady!
When Belva isn’t teaching, presenting or doing admin work, she can be found with her fingers in the dirt of one of her many garden beds, or wrestling with her hand spun and hand dyed wool that she loves to create.
Heather Fraser
EXECUATIVE DIRECTORHeather is the Founder/Director of Saplings Outdoor Program and Saplings Nature School. A mother of two, She passionate about working with children and has a love for the outdoors. Heather has taught in a number of early childhood settings including toddler, preschool, and school-aged programs. She has a passion for nature and is excited to share that passion with others around her.Her academic background includes a Maters in Educaitonal Leadership, BA in Child and Youth Care from the University of Victoria, as well as an Early Childhood Certificate. Her passion for outdoor play and the importance of connecting our children with nature inspired her to build Saplings Outdoor Program.
Jarret Krentzel
FOUNDING MEMBERIs the Founder/Director of Hand-In-Hand Nature Education. He has over 20 years of experience teaching environmental education and outdoor learning from preschools to universities in British Columbia, Yukon, New York, Oregon and California. He is a member of the BC Nature’s Education Committee,
Outdoor Early Learning Association of BC, Comox Valley Nature Educators and PLAY Comox Valley. With his belief that nature is our ultimate teacher and we are nature’s ultimate students, his mission with Hand-In-Hand Education is to create an outdoor learning environment where their forest friends feel safe and comfortable while playing, learning and connecting in nature!
Enid Elliot
SECRETARYEnid Elliot is a Canadian early childhood educator, an advocate for the people who work with young children, and a person who deeply cares for and is concerned about the lives of all children. While her career in early childhood education (ECE) is more than four decades old, she is now widely seen in British Columbia, and indeed in Canada, as one of the founding ‘mothers’ of the nature kindergarten /nature preschool movement.
Nancy van Groll
MEMBERNancy van Groll has worked in the field of early childhood education for 15 years as an educator, instructor, researcher, and community organizer. She is faculty in the Early Childhood Care and Education Department at Capilano University and serves as Faculty Coordinator of the EarthWorks Initiative, a cross-campus sustainability program that fosters public engagement in climate education. Nancy is currently pursuing her PhD in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia.
Her research and teaching explore how educators and children participate in the shared work of living and learning well together amid ecological and social challenges, particularly in outdoor contexts. She is passionate about fostering place-responsive and sustainability-oriented pedagogies that connect theory and practice, bridging postsecondary, professional, and community contexts through collaborative, relational approaches to education.
Haley Taylor
MEMBERBio coming soon…
History of Outdoor Education
In rural areas, and historical times, access to nature has not been a problem; Indigenous Peoples have been raising and teaching their children outside and in connection to their land for thousands of years, and living on more rural land and in less population density in historical times has meant an abundance of opportunities for people to be in nature. Over the last century, with increasing urbanization and with the rise of “nature deficit disorder”, there have been many changes in stance on formal outdoor education. The practice of taking learning outside for child-led, experiential and outdoor learning experiences has been around and evolving since the late 1880’s. In 1914, the socialist political activists Rachel and Margaret McMillan set up an “open-air nursery” and witnessed an improvement in child health.
In the 1950s there were many Nature and Forest Schools and Daycares established in Scandinavia, Europe and the UK. The world’s first known forest school was created by Ella Flautau in Denmark in 1952. The idea formed when her and neighbors’ children began gathering daily in a nearby forest, an unofficial form of daycare which elicited great interest among other parents in the community. The parents formed a group and created an initiative to establish “walking kindergartens” out of the Waldorf-Steiner approach to education- child-led and play-based, with adults as facilitators not teachers. Forest schools, or Naturbørnehavens, started popping up throughout Denmark in the 1950s as the country struggled with a lack of indoor space for young childhood education centers. Regular outdoor learning for older children is referred to with the term udeskole.
As of 2005 there were approximately 450 nature kindergartens in Germany. Over the last two decades Forest School programs have been increasing in popularity in many Scandinavian countries, New Zealand, many parts of the UK, as well as throughout North America. In Canada, the first Forest School was created in 2007 by Marlene Powers in Ottawa.
In British Columbia, the first known forest school was created by Tricia Edgar and Lisa Howey-Louter in 2010 called Fresh Air Learning (FAL). FAL started in the forests of North Vancouver and has expanded to some parts of Vancouver. FAL has paved the way for many outdoor education programs in the Lower Mainland to begin and offers professional development to educators throughout the year as well as hosting multiple preschool aged and elementary aged programs. In Canada, the Forest and Nature School Movement officially began when Forest School Canada was developed in 2012 under the Child and Nature Alliance of Canada.
Although forest and nature schools had existed from coast to coast here and there across Canada before, Forest School Canada made unifying Nature School Programs possible, and introduced a way to ensure Forest and Nature Schools operate with the same core principles.
Since the pandemic (2020) there has been a sharp rise in outdoor education programs across BC and especially in the Lower Mainland. As of now, there aren’t any licensing guidelines around outdoor education.
Mission Statement
The Outdoor Early Learning Association’s mission is to support changes to BC licensing standards for Early Years Outdoor Learning Programs, while providing services for all BC outdoor educators in offering support, resources and professional development training.
Vision
To assist in accelerate BC licensing standards to include Early Years Outdoor Learning Programs while being a nature-based resource hub for all in need.