Nature,
Culture,
& Childhood Conference
A one-day gathering for educators, nature-based practitioners & curious grown-ups, working with children ages 3 - 10
October 10, 2026, 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
9:30 - 10:00 AM; Arrival, Coffee & Conversation
Leila Day, 100 Cold Spring St., New Haven, CT
This event is free and open to the public. Lunch is included.
ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
Reimagining early childhood through nature, culture
& community
Join us for a day of hands-on workshops exploring the intersections of nature, culture, identity, learning, and childhood. Connect with educators and practitioners from across our community, try new things, share ideas, and step outside our individual school silos for a day of learning together.
Why Gather?
Children encounter the natural world in a hundred different ways — through play, questions, stories, movement, relationships, and the places they call home.
This gathering invites educators and other grown-ups to slow down, look more closely, and consider how nature, culture, identity, and belonging shape children's experiences of the world.
Come ready to wonder, experiment, exchange ideas, and learn alongside colleagues from different schools and organizations.
Sessions will take place across Leila Day’s indoor classrooms, outdoor learning environments, and nearby East Rock Park and the Mill River.
Six Hands-On Workshops
Who Am I in the Woods?
Nature, Identity, and the Developing Child
Gamaliel Gammy Moses
Independent Outdoor Educator
Workshop Description:
What happens when children have the opportunity to know themselves through their relationships with the natural world? In this hands-on workshop, we’ll explore how intentional outdoor routines and practices can build children’s confidence, agency, and sense of belonging in the places where they live and learn. Participants will explore practical tools—including nature songs, games, activities, and simple outdoor practices—that can be put to use right away, while considering how time outdoors can support social-emotional development, deepen children’s understanding of place, and invite them to discover who they are in the world around them.
Water Stories: Children’s Relationships with Waterways and What Water is Telling Us
Water Stories Collective
Jill Olesker and Svetlana Zabolotnaia
Workshop Description:
Water is a keeper of memories and a storyteller of the earth. This experiential workshop invites participants to explore how children can develop meaningful relationships with streams, rivers, and oceans through storytelling, art, poetry, and mindful observation. Together, we’ll share personal water memories, discover stories and natural elements along the Mill River, and explore simple practices for helping children listen to and express what water has to tell us. The workshop offers a flexible, co-created framework that educators and caregivers can bring back to their work with children.
Math and Literacy in Nature
Or how to convince your supervisor the kids are learning
Robyn Stewart
School Programs Manager at Common Ground
Workshop Description:
How can we support literacy and math learning without sacrificing time outdoors? In this practical, play-based workshop, we’ll explore how nature and outdoor spaces can become engaging classrooms for building foundational skills. Through activities involving reading, storytelling, journaling, counting, sorting, patterns, problem-solving, and more, participants will discover ways to connect outdoor play with learning standards. Whether you have a sidewalk, schoolyard, local park, or forest, you’ll leave with adaptable ideas for helping children learn—and demonstrating that learning—while playing outside.
Unlearning Adultism and Other Inherited Scripts
Kimberly Gill
Founder & Director of Brave Nature School
Workshop Description:
This is an interactive workshop for caregivers and educators exploring the inner work that children and the land call us toward. Through reflective memory work, hands-on activities, and role play, participants will examine adultism and other harmful scripts we inherit and reproduce in homes, schools, and society. Together, we’ll practice recognizing adultist patterns and explore ways to build solidarity with children and honor their sovereignty. Participants will leave with shared language, practical tools, and invitations for continued reflection and action in their relationships and organizations.
Culture, Acknowledgement and Ancestral Connection to Nature as a Birthright
Sarita Covington
Founder of Upper Manhattan Forest Kids
Workshop Description:
We are nature, and we are shaped by the ecosystems that nurture us. In this workshop, we’ll consider how our histories, identities, and cultural relationships with the outdoors shape the spaces we create for children. Through storytelling, reflection, conversation, and place-based activities, we’ll explore questions of belonging and power: Who feels entitled to be in nature? Whose knowledge and ways of relating to the natural world are recognized? And what can our own cultural lineages teach us about building deeper connections? Participants will leave with a practical reflective framework they can bring back to their classrooms, programs, and communities to deepen belonging and anti-racist practice.
Same Place, Different Eyes: Wonder, Uncertainty, and Emergent Curriculum Outdoors
Karlyn Donovan & Katie Finnegan
Co-Lead Teachers at Leila Day
Workshop Description:
What happens when we return to a familiar place without deciding in advance what we are supposed to find? In this outdoor, interactive workshop, Katie and Karlyn invite participants to experience place-based learning and emergent curriculum firsthand. Through observation, revisiting, small-group exploration, and an interactive curriculum challenge, participants will explore how uncertainty, children’s questions, and teachers’ responses can shape deeper inquiry. Together, we’ll consider how the same place can spark different theories and possibilities—and leave with a simple framework for responsive curriculum: Notice. Wonder. Revisit. Respond.
Conference Schedule
9:30 - 10:00 AM
Arrival, Check-in, & Morning Coffee
10:00 - 10:30 AM
Welcome Address & Invitation to Become Part of the Work
10:30 - 12:00 PM
Workshops Session Block 1 (Pick One)
Who Am I in the Woods? Nature, Identity, and the Developing Child
Unlearning Adultism and Other Inherited Scripts
Same Place, Different Eyes: Wonder, Uncertainty, and Emergent Curriculum Outdoors
12:00 - 1:00 PM
Lunch & Networking
1:00 - 2:30 PM
Workshops Session Block 2 (Pick One)
Culture, Acknowledgement and Ancestral Connection to Nature as a Birthright
Math and Literacy in Nature: or how to convince your supervisor the kids are learning
Water Stories: Children’s Relationships with Waterways and What Water is Telling Us
2:30 - 3:30 PM
Closing Reflective Activity
3:30 - 4:00 PM
Wind Down Drinks & Networking
WELCOME ADDRESS
Charlie Malone, PhD
"Nature, Culture, & Childhood"
Charlie Malone is overjoyed to have found a home at Leila Day. He grew up immersed in the social liberation movements of the 1960s and, as a young child, attended the Inter-Community Learning Center, a free school where he learned through play, peer collaboration, and the gentle care of supportive adults. He earned a B.A. in Philosophy and Literature from the New School for Social Research and began his career as a preschool teacher at the Park Slope Child Care Collective in Brooklyn, NY.
He later completed a PhD in Child Studies, Education, and Schooling at UC Berkeley. After a long career as an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at The City College of New York, he returned to New Haven and joined Leila Day in 2014 as a teacher and Nature and Curriculum Facilitator before becoming Executive Director.
Leila Day
100 Cold Spring St.
New Haven, Connecticut
