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New Videos!

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We are excited to share two new videos created by the national Cities Connecting Children to Nature initiative, a partnership of the Children & Nature Network and the National League of Cities.

Cities Connecting Children to Nature (CCCN): Vision for Action
The CCCN initiative has a vision where it is the norm that every Mayor in every city works towards providing all children with nature connections in their daily lives. In 2017 San Francisco became one of 7 pilot cities of this initiative which has now grown to include 18 cities nationwide.

Watch this short video to learn more about this work in San Francisco, Houston, and Rochester. Learn more about CCCN at https://childrenandnature.org/cities

Cities Connecting Children to Nature (CCCN): Vision for Action

Cities Connecting Children to Nature (CCCN) San Francisco
Since 2016, through the San Francisco Children & Nature collaborative, we have built a coalition of over 30 organizations and city departments all working together to more equitably connect all children to the many benefits of nature. Here’s our story of collaboration, partnerships and a shared vision of equity.

Cities Connecting Children to Nature (CCCN): San Francisco

“Naturing Up” Early Childhood Play Spaces

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The First 5 San Francisco Connecting Children to Nature program integrates professional development, hands-on nature experiences for educators, and teacher action projects over a six-month period. This year, they worked with educators, leaders, families, and community partners at 15 Early Childhood Centers and 14 Family Childcare sites to ‘green’ educational spaces and increase nature-based curriculum.

SF Rec & Park and the Presidio Trust Forestry teams provided 329 wooden stumps from downed park trees to support this effort. SF Botanical Gardens donated 15 large bamboo plants.

In 2019-2020, the work will continue to encourage and offer resources to teachers who have been involved so far and expand its reach to additional sites.

Project Highlights:

At Storybook School, where tree stumps were added to the outdoor play area, students have been practicing their balancing skills by walking from one end to the other, jumping off into the sand pit, and even offering a helping hand to their younger classmates.

At Wu Yee Generations, open-ended natural materials were added to the math and science area. Almost immediately, students started working together to explore, count the blocks, measure and experiment. They were excited to see how many they could stack without it falling. After coming back from a field trip to zoo, they used the wooden blocks, twigs, rocks, and shells to create habitats for the animals.

“From this project, I was inspired to be more creative in thinking about how I can gather and utilize more natural resources from our natural environment.” – Teacher Joanne

2018 Program Infographic >>

Presidio Tunnel Tops | Prototype Field Station + Outpost

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Presidio Outpostby Damien Raffa

In the Fall of 2021 the Presidio’s new Tunnel Tops park will open, featuring extraordinary new experiential features that will substantially add to the now actively enlarging “ecosystem” of nature connection in the city. For the second summer, the Presidio Trust prototyped experiences envisioned for the outdoor 2-acre nature play Outpost and the indoor multi-sensory investigative Field Station.

More than 2,500 children, youth and grown-ups have participated in our staffed programs this summer, and countless others enjoyed the nature play on other days of the week. This Nature Exploration Area pop-up will remain for public enjoyment through the end of October. Go check it out on the Presidio’s Main Post (map search “34 Graham Street“) and play “grass is lava” on the logs and stumps, barefoot even!

To create the pop-up installation, we worked with renowned natural playground expert, Adam Bienenstock, and 35 participants representing early childhood educators, project managers, planners, architects, teachers, foresters and gardeners as part of an SF Children & Nature design-build workshop. The Presidio Trust’s forestry crew crafted the “bones” of the Nature Exploration Area with logs from park forest management projects. See video

SAN FRANCISCO CHILDREN & NATURE

SF Children & Nature is part of the national Cities Connecting Children to Nature (CCCN) initiative and is working to address the disparities in nature access along socioeconomic and racial lines to ensure all children have the opportunity to play, learn and grow in the outdoors.

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(415) 298-7532
info@sfchildrennature.org