Lipt Kwəcəmək: Take It Outside
Head Start’s Lipt Kwəcəmək (Take It Outside) is a blended model of the Aboriginal Head Start components and the Forest School approach to preschool and learning. Our Take It Outside model is supported by three sets of guidelines about learnings and growth for Aboriginal children and their families through Outward Bound, the New Brunswick Curriculum Framework and an Aboriginal approach to living and learning.
Our Goals Outdoors:
To explore various terrain safety and competently, engage in meaningful, pleasurable and culturally enriched activities;
To have healthier relationships with the AHS centre, the family and the community through positive social interaction doing exciting, accessible and fun activities;
To have children and parents/families who see the natural world as a beautiful and life-giving place in which they belong and have a right and obligation to enjoy and protect;
To have staff who are trained in conducting outdoor activities safely, creatively and knowledgeably
What Makes This Program Unique and Valuable:
It’s about the child- teaching the child, not the subject: The approach to learning is through discovery and experimentation with inquiry-based learning.
Building confidence through mastery: Ensuring a safe environment and teaching the safest way to do things in the outdoors is paramount to gaining confidence as learners.
Teaching and learning holistically: Outdoor education provides whole experience with mind, heart, emotions and spirit. This extends and enriches parents and children experienced and relationships.
Language and culture that are nature based: Using the outdoors offers and excellent opportunity to teach and learn cultural knowledge and language which is the basis of traditional Aboriginal Identity.
Increased family and community engagement: A key success factor in promoting a healthy lifestyle and sense of well being for the family and continues practices of healthy, confident outdoor experience.
Our Basecamp and Partnerships
Our Take It Outside Basecamp located is in O’Dell Park in downtown Fredericton; a magnificent site of old growth forest with a variety of natural features such as ponds, streams, meadows and gardens with a diversity of plants and wild creatures.
Kci-wəliwən, thank you:
To our Language Speakers and Elders for sharing their knowledge enthusiasm and expertise
To the Fredericton Botanical Gardens Association and The City of Fredericton for assisting us in providing a safe, appropriate project site
To our advisors and partner organizations: Outdoor Educators of New Brunswick, Tir Na Nog Forest School, Forest School Canada and the many who have graciously volunteered expertise and support
