Little Roots 
Our Approach
The thinking behind the play.
Little Roots is inspired by the forest school tradition, but we don’t follow a single method. Instead, we blend four educational philosophies - Montessori, Waldorf, Reggio Emilia, and Charlotte Mason - into something built for toddlers ages 1–3, this place (the PNW forest), and these families.
When most people hear “forest school,” they picture older kids building shelters and whittling sticks. Our version looks a little different - because our learners are still discovering what happens when they step in a puddle on purpose. And that’s exactly where we meet them. We take the best of many approaches and shape them around each child.
What Guides Us
From Montessori: Independence and Real Work
Our stations include pouring, scooping, and transferring - what Montessori calls practical life. When a toddler pours water from one cup to another, they’re building fine motor control, concentration, and confidence all at once. We set up the environment so kids can do things themselves, at their own pace. No one rushes them, and no one does it for them.
From Waldorf: Rhythm and Wonder
Our sessions follow the same gentle rhythm every week - arrival, stations, circle, snack, nature walk, closing. That predictability is grounding, not boring. Young children thrive when they know what comes next. We lean into storytelling, songs, and sensory experiences rather than flashcards or worksheets. The forest provides more than enough to wonder about.
From Reggio Emilia: The Environment as Teacher
This is our biggest influence. We don’t bring a lesson plan and force the forest to fit it. We watch what the children are drawn to and build from there. A pile of sticks becomes a counting game. A puddle becomes a science experiment. The forest IS the curriculum - and the children tell us what they’re ready to learn by what they reach for.
From Charlotte Mason: Nature as the First Teacher
Charlotte Mason believed young children learn best through direct contact with living things - not pictures of birds, but real birds. Not a lesson about rain, but standing in it. Our nature walks are the heart of this philosophy. We go slow, we notice, we narrate what we see. “I notice that mushroom is growing on the log. I wonder why.” That simple practice teaches observation, language, and reverence for the natural world.
At the Stations
Each week we set up five to seven nature-based stations, and children move freely between them. Nobody tells them where to go or when to rotate - they choose. That freedom is intentional. Here’s what they’ll find:
Collaborative Art
The whole class builds one big art piece together over the course of the session series. Each week the children add to it using a different technique - sponge painting, pressing yarn into paint, brushes, leaves, sticks. This is where the Crown Celebration begins (more on that below).
Individual Art
Open-ended invitations to create - painting with sticks, pressing leaves into clay, dripping watercolors onto wet paper. This is always process art, which means there’s never a model to copy. Your child decides what it becomes.
Sensory Play
Mud, water, sand, natural textures. Sensory experiences help toddlers process their world and regulate their emotions. If your child wants to squish mud between their fingers for twenty minutes, that’s not mess - that’s development.
Nature Exploration
Magnifying glasses, bug jars, collecting trays. We investigate whatever the forest gives us that day - a feather, a slug, a patch of moss. The curriculum changes with the seasons because the forest does.
Motor Skills
Climbing on low stumps, balancing on logs, walking on uneven ground. This is age-appropriate risk that builds confidence and body awareness. The forest floor is the best gross motor gym there is.
Practical Life
Pouring, scooping, transferring, sorting. These Montessori-inspired tasks build independence and fine motor control. Your toddler is capable of more than you think - and they light up when they get to prove it.
Mud Kitchen
Dirt soup, acorn stew, pinecone pie. Your child stirs, pours, scoops, and serves while building language, imagination, and sensory confidence - all in one glorious mess. Expect muddy hands, big smiles, and a kid who wants to cook dinner with you when you get home.
We also bring a pop-up privacy tent with a changing mat and children’s potty, so diaper changes, toileting, and clothes changes are covered rain or shine.
What Is Process Art?
Process art means the focus is on the experience of creating, not on making a finished product that looks a certain way. There’s no model to copy, no “right” way to do it, and no adult hovering to make sure the tree looks like a tree. Your child might paint with sticks, smear mud across paper, press leaves into clay, or tear and layer natural materials into a collage. Every choice they make is theirs.
Why does this matter? Because process art builds fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. It builds decision-making and creative confidence. It supports sensory processing and self-regulation. And most importantly, it teaches your child that their ideas have value - that what they create doesn’t need to match someone else’s version to be worthy.
You might see your child’s art and think “that’s just a smear of brown paint.” To your child, it’s the mud they discovered on the trail, the color of the bark they touched, the feeling of the brush in their hand for the first time. That’s not “just” anything. That’s a whole world of learning on a single piece of paper.
What They’re Really Learning
Parents sometimes wonder what a two-year-old is “getting” from all this. A lot, actually.
When your child scoops mud into a cup, they’re developing fine motor skills. When they balance on a log, that’s gross motor development and spatial awareness. When they sit in circle and hear a story, that’s language development and social connection. When they choose which station to visit next, that’s executive function. When they watch a friend and try the same thing, that’s social learning. When they come back to the same station week after week and try something different, that’s persistence and creativity.
None of this requires a worksheet. It just requires the right environment, the right rhythm, and adults who know what to look for. That’s what we’re here for.
The Crown Celebration
This is one of our favorite Little Roots traditions.
Each season, the whole class builds one big collaborative art piece together. Week by week, the children add to it using different techniques, sponge painting one week, pressing yarn into paint the next, then brushes, then leaves and sticks.
At the end of the season, we cut this shared masterpiece into individual crowns, one for every child. Each crown carries a piece of every session, every technique, and every tiny hand that touched it.
Your child walks out of the forest wearing something the whole class made together, and that’s a pretty magical thing.