Gretchen’s House Stadium
Infant and Toddler
Several years ago Gretchen Preston, the owner of Gretchen’s House Child Care Centers, attended the Nature Explore Leadership Institute in Nebraska. This conference inspired her to design all new outdoor classrooms to meet the Nature Explore standards and to redesign existing spaces.
Flash forward to 2019 when Gretchen encouraged three of our current administrators to return to the institute. They returned to Ann Arbor with a renewed sense of import for bringing all of our outdoor classrooms consistently in line with the Nature Explore guiding principles. To ensure that staff had the resources they needed to meet the outdoor classroom criteria at their individual centers, we have been meeting with representatives from each of our eight centers once a month since June of 2021.
As we continue our work on our physical spaces together, we were also more intentional in sharing this information with staff and families. Staff have continued to receive yearly trainings pertaining to the Nature Explore Outdoor Classroom, and have brought that knowledge back to their centers and families. Gretchen’s House uses social media as a way to share information with families, but also sends out a reoccurring newsletter with families to let them know about outdoor updates, share ideas/activities and extend to them community engagement opportunities.
Every year since 2022, Gretchen’s House has continued to send staff to the Leadership Institute. Every year we have staff return with a real sense of the difference that being outdoors makes for both adults and children, as well as new ideas that continuously contribute to improving our outdoor spaces. The inspiration can be seen throughout the center. We are always continuing to grow by making changes to our Stadium center through the inspiration and guidance of our teachers and the Nature Explore Organization.
When you walk onto our Infant and Toddler spaces, you can see children in different areas with teachers alongside them. Infants lay under the trees as they look at the branches filled with leaves sway in the wind. Toddlers are carrying around sticks, brainstorming with teachers what type of structure they are going to build today. Children wander from garden space to climbing spaces, and everything in between with curiosity and excitement. The outdoor classroom is their favorite space to explore!
