Fostering a Sense of Place in Language Immersion Preschool Through Environmental Exploration

This paper endeavors to address the need of outdoor environmental education in language immersion early childhood education settings. It investigates the impact of outdoor education on child development, looking at cognitive, social/emotional, and physical benefits. It examines the affective impact of attention fatigue, attention restoration, learned helplessness, and action competence. It also looks at the effect of place-based education in fostering a sense of place, and the role of sense of place in encouraging the development of an environmentally aware lifestyle. Finally, it proposes a place-based environmental education curriculum of six lessons, in French and English, around the subject of a prairie garden and bumblebees. The lessons are interdisciplinary, covering the topics of math, art, science, visual discrimination (pre-literacy), and physical education, and are designed for preschool aged children (ages 4-5). The findings of this paper suggest that time spent in nature has numerous benefits for children, and reinforces the need for all early childhood learning programs (language immersion programs included) to add place-based nature education to their curriculum.