Dancing with Risk in Outdoor Play
REGISTRATION FOR THIS EVENT IS CLOSED
Date: Wednesday, March 1
Time: 6:30pm - 8:30pm MST
Location: On-line
Cost: $39.00 Approved for PD funding for Early Childhood Educators in Alberta. Includes 1.5 hours of release time.
When children have the freedom to roam and explore, and when they have a sense of self-agency to fuel their own learning process, they will naturally engage in risk. Children inherently want to explore their environment, test their limits, and negotiate their comfort zone between thrilling possibilities and the potential for harm. This is very exciting, arguably it’s where learning, growth, and happiness resides, and yet it can feel very scary for adults who may feel ill-equipped to navigate, manage and support children in that exploration.
This workshop will explore the dance adults do internally, and the dance we do with children when risk shows up in children’s outdoor play. We will explore the evidence-base behind risk, (including the developmental benefits for children), how the experts define risky play, strategies for co-managing risk with children, and an exploration into the “Risk Benefit Assessment for Outdoor Play- A Canadian Toolkit” that was published in 2019.
Resource: Gill, T., Power, M., & Brussoni, M. (2019). Risk Benefit Assessment for Outdoor Play: A Canadian Toolkit. Ottawa: Child & Nature Alliance of Canada.
Marnie Power
She/Her
M.Ed [in completion], B.S.W.
Marnie Power is an experienced leader and speaker in outdoor and play-based learning. After establishing the first Forest School in Canada in 2008, she went on to develop a professional learning initiative to support educators and early childhood educators (Forest School Canada), while leading the Child and Nature Alliance of Canada [CNAC] as their Executive Director. She was also a former steering committee member of Outdoor Play Canada, as well as founder of the Ottawa Forest and Nature School, a program now run by Andrew Fleck Children’s Service in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Since leaving her role with CNAC she participated in a two-year Child and Nature Fellowship hosted by Community Knowledge Exchange, where she has pursued creative and academic pursuits. In the fellowship, Marnie wrote and self-published a children’s book called “A TOWNIE NOW” based on her own life as a young child who loses her connection to place and the land. After moving into social housing in ‘town’, she has to rediscover her sense of home, and who she is now without the comforts of the ‘bay’.
Marnie is completing a Master’s degree in Education at Trent University where she’s been exploring the intersections between play-based learning, the outdoors, self-agency, and how pedagogy translates into practice for educators. Marnie is a proud mom of Hazel (16), and Emry (13), as well as a Newfoundlander living in Chelsea, Quebec, Canada. She’s a twin, and queer woman who likes to wander aimlessly in the woods or near water, whenever she can.