What is Nature’s Way Our Way?
Nature’s Way Our Way is a project that aims to create culturally rooted physical literacy-enriched activities to promote wholistic wellness in pre-school aged (3-5 years old) children. A team of educators came together to create a set of 10 culturally rooted activity cards and 7 culturally rooted land based cards. These cards all have physical literacy links and aim to increase holistic wellness. These cards are being tested out in various rural and urban centres throughout the province! To date this project has been piloted and shared in centres that together serve 150 Indigenous children and their families!
Along with the creation of cards the team travels out to different communities across Saskatchewan to provide training to the educators, provide the cards to the centres, as well as provide activity kits for the centre and for the children to take home that include all the necessary material to participate in the activities.
These cards can be found here.
As of January 2024 the team is still testing out the original activity cards as well as starting to create new activity cards with the centres. The goal with this phase of the project is to create culturally rooted activity cards from educators own backgrounds and cultures that can then be shared out amongst other centres.
Purpose and Objectives of the Nature’s Way Our Way Project:
Physical activity participation among early years children is essential to supporting overall health and wellness, while promoting confidence, competence, and motivation in engaging in daily physical activities in a range of different ways and in different environments.
Many Canadian children, particularly those who are Indigenous, are not meeting the recommended physical activity levels necessary for achieving health benefits.
The primary goal of our study is to increase the impact of Nature’s Way Our Way by collaborating with rural and on-reserve communities to evaluate the initiative among family caregivers, early childhood educators, and community leaders. Overall, this project supports Indigenous peoples in leading the development and implementation of a culturally meaningful early years physical literacy initiative that aims to support the overall health and wellness of Indigenous children, their families, and communities.
Our goal with the Nature’s Way Our Way project is to:
1. Engage
Through educator professional development, together we will:
Explore a physical literacy enriched environment at your center, and how you can provide fun opportunities for children to develop physical literacy and foster a love of movement
Explore ways to promote social and cultural connectedness (e.g., through land-based approaches)
Explore ways to role model positive movement experiences for children to engage in risky and adventurous play
Provide you with knowledge and skills to support children to become competent and confident movers through 10 culturally-rooted Nature's Way-Our Way Activity Cards.
2. Share
Share the 10 Activity Cards with children in your center for 12-weeks (you will receive ongoing support from the onsite project coordinator as necessary)
Parents/families will also be given the Activity Cards and equipment to use with children at home.
3. Reflect
Through conversational interviews (with educators) and sharing circles (with educators and parents/families):
How did you perceive the Activity Cards? Did you like them? Could any amendments be made?
How did they support you to provide cultural connections and traditional teachings in movement-based learning?
How did they benefit the children in supporting wholistic wellness through developing movement, social, and emotional skills?
4. Create
Along with parents/families, we would love to learn about the cultural activities you do with the children, to then pilot them over another 12-weeks (also continuing to use the original 10 Activity Cards)
An Indigenous artist will be invited to create illustrations for the new activities/lessons.
These will be digitized and available for your future use.
On the Nature’s Way Our Way Journey We Will:
The Nature’s Way project is currently being funded by 2 grants:
SHRF Impact Grant
Our primary goal is to promote wholistic wellness among Indigenous early years children and address the health disparities faced by Indigenous children, youth, their families, and communities.
Objectives:
Revitalizing Early Learning Environments: Collaborate with early childhood educators, families, and Elders/Knowledge Holders to integrate elements of Mother Nature and land-based relationality into early learning environments, fostering intergenerational bonds and promoting physical literacy and wholistic wellness.
Co-creating Wellness Initiatives: Partner with six early learning settings (three rural First Nations and three urban) to develop a land-arts-and-culture-based environmental revitalization initiative, creating culturally meaningful tools to assess its impact.
Implementing and Delivering Programs: Lead the initiative's implementation through early learning settings, guided by Indigenous early childhood educators and enriched by wisdom from diverse First Nations and Métis cultures across the province.
Approach:
Strength-Based and Trauma-Informed: Utilize approaches that build on community strengths and address trauma.
Two-Eyed Seeing: Integrate Indigenous wellness practices with Western health promotion methods.
Physical Literacy: Emphasize a wholistic approach to movement experiences, recognizing their impact on overall well-being.
New Frontiers Research Grant
Rooted in the relationships established during the creation of Nature’s Way-Our Way resources, the
project aims to co-create culturally informed and decolonized physical literacy enriched early
learning environments to promote wholistic wellness among early years Indigenous and non-Indigenous
children. This environmental revitalization initiative for early years settings will apply etuaptmumk (Twoeyed
Seeing) to create a novel and strength-based methodological approach that crosses multiple
disciplines through the braiding of the Indigenous DOHaD theory together with the concept of physical
literacy.
The specific project objectives include:
Exploring how the physical, social, and temporal environments of early learning environments can
be revitalized by weaving in elements of Mother Nature, foster intergenerational bonds, encourage
land-based relationality, create opportunities to develop physical literacy.
Co-creating a land-, arts-, and culture-based environmental revitalization initiative and developing
culturally meaningful tools for assessing its impacts.
Piloting and assessing the initiative.
