Welcome to The Nature Nurture Approach—a course designed and written by Terri Harrison, Daniel Harrison, and Niki Buchan.

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 delivered over 16 short modules, each exploring a key theme. Each module contains five focused lessons that break the topic down into manageable sections. 

The course follows an action learning model, encouraging reflection and practical application. 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.