We are ever so lucky that our preschool is bordered by beautiful natural bushland. We value the bush as a part of our learning environment, and take small groups of children out into it on (almost) a daily basis.

When I found a poem "This is my Rock" by David McCord, it instantly spoke to me of the feeling of ownership we are seeing in our kids after months, and in some cases a couple of years of exploring our bush trail.…

After spending the past few weeks writing about natural elements in children's play spaces, I inspired myself to build a bush cubby with the kids at preschool.



I gathered up some intrepid stick hunters and we headed outside to gather up some of the long, sturdy sticks we could see lying on the ground.

These boys love their sticks, and were quite thrilled that we were blatently breaking the "no sticks bigger than…