Nature Nurture Approach

This professional development course is rooted in years of hands-on work with children in Aberdeen, Scotland, where the Nature Nurture Project began as an early intervention for those who had experienced adversity and trauma. By offering weekly nature-based play supported by nurturing adults, we witnessed remarkable improvements in children’s confidence, resilience, and overall wellbeing.

While the Nature Nurture Project began as a targeted intervention, it's become clear that all children benefit from this approach. Many now face challenges with anxiety, emotional regulation, and resilience—regardless of their backgrounds. That’s why we’ve developed this course: to help early years practitioners, group leaders, and teachers bring the benefits of Nature Nurture to their whole class or group.

The Nature Nurture Approach is a fully online, flexible professional development programme designed to support educators in embedding outdoor-based, nurture-informed practice across early years and primary settings.

Spanning approximately 60 hours of self-directed study, this course allows individuals or whole teams to learn at their own pace, with optional consultation visits for tailored support.

At the heart of the course is a cycle of action research: Theory → Practice → Observation → Reflection → Change

Practitioners are encouraged to apply new ideas in real settings, reflect on impact, and adapt their approach to deepen both personal understanding and whole-school change.

Course Focus:

• Lead meaningful change across the school to enhance outdoor learning and nurture-based practice
• Promote organisational transformation by tracking and recording improvements in children's resilience, attainment and wellbeing
• Foster staff professional and personal development in understanding, wellbeing and confidence

This course supports a sustainable culture shift, equipping educators to develop inclusive, responsive environments where children thrive in both learning and life.

Course Features:
✔ Fully online
✔ Self-paced learning
✔ Optional in-person consultation support
✔ Evidence-informed
✔ Designed for individual or team development

The Nature Nurture Approach is delivered over 16 modules, each exploring a key theme. Each module contains five focused lessons that break the topic down into manageable sections. Each module includes:

🧭 Take It Outside
A practical challenge designed to help you apply your learning with your group. This could involve a short outdoor activity, observation task, or environmental tweak.

📝 Reflective Practice
After each activity, you’ll reflect on the experience using simple prompts which will require a short online response before you progress through the module. We recommend keeping a journal—written, audio, video, or digital—throughout the course. You won’t need to submit this, but it will become a powerful tool for reflection and future planning.

🧰 Nature Nurture Toolkit
A collection of practical techniques and strategies that you’ll test out in the next module’s Take It Outside activity.