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The Ultimate Back-to-School Checklist: 13 Classroom Essentials You Need This Year
After a summer of fun, teachers, students, and homeschooling parents are gearing up for a new school year. Getting ready to go back to school...
Learning with Nature: Finding Creative Inspiration
Learning with nature means not just learning in or about nature, but learning in an environment where the natural world becomes another teacher. Good teachers of course help their students learn facts and ways...
7 Ways to Create Invitations to Play through a Child’s Environment
“Want to play?” These are magical words to children. An invitation to play is welcoming, inclusive, and suggests that fun is about to happen. Children learn through play,...
Learning with Nature: The Science of Mud
Play, especially messy play, is often under appreciated in children’s learning. This is particularly true when it comes to playing with mud. Adults focus on the...
Guidecraft Partners with Reforestation Nonprofit One Tree Planted
We care deeply about the planet and contributing to creating a better, healthier world for children and their families. As a company that strives to...
How to Make Outdoor Play Possible All Year Long
It is so important that children get outside to play. When children step outdoors their senses activate and they experience the world in a heightened...
Mud Play = The Perfect Screen Break – Lauren’s Learning Lab Featuring Rusty Keeler
In this episode of Lauren’s Learning Lab, mom, architect and teacher, Lauren Magee is joined by author, educator and natural playscape designer, Rusty Keeler. Together, they work to design...
How to Design the Best Playroom for Kids
Your child’s playroom should spark creativity and wonder! In a recent article for Redfin, experts shared 22 awesome playroom ideas for kids and how to make space...
What is play exactly? Why do we play? Why do children play? Why do animals play? When you see dogs playfully roughhousing or dolphins joyously...
Outdoor Preschool During a Pandemic: Creating an Urban Forest School
So there we were last spring: in the middle of a global pandemic. School, childcare, everything, shutdown! Then all summer we wondered: Yes, school? No,...
Learning with Nature: Animals and Empathy
“Look a worm. We should make it a home!” If you’ve spent any time with young children, you’ve likely heard a phrase similar to this...
Learning with Nature: Moments of Serendipity
The memory of my grandmother’s voice and joy as she declared, “Serendipity!” came flooding back to me last week. I was spending the day with...
Ok, I admit it—it’s difficult for me when my kids go back to school in the fall. I’m one of those adults who has a...
Learning with Nature: Math of Plants
Bursts of sunflowers, spirals of a cucumber tendrils, different leaf shapes of the sassafras tree, and the large number of acorns during an oak mast...
It was the most healing thing I’d seen during this whole COVID time: children playing together—finally. After how long? Too long. My two sons, 8 and...
Learning with Nature: The Power of Silence
The world is so noisy! There are dings of email alerts, cars, air conditioners running, lawnmowers, garbage trucks—the list goes on. Metaphorically we’re also surrounded...
In a recent edWebinar presentation sponsored by Kaplan Early Learning Company, Dr. Sandra Duncan, author, educator and classroom design expert, and Lauren Magee, licensed architect and Director of...
How to Bring Back Your Life’s Rhythms: Importance of Hideaways for Kids
For the past few months, the common thread of COVID-19 has changed all our lives. Through this change, we’ve discovered many things about our children,...
Learning with Nature: Language and Literacy in Context
“But how will they learn to read and write outside?” I often hear this question from parents considering a nature-based preschool. Honestly, the answer is...
How to Bring Back Your Life’s Rhythms: Balancing Screen Time with Art Time
There’s no doubt about it; the COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed education and how we teach children. With the ever increasing reality that many schools...
How Kids Learn Using Their Senses – Lauren’s Learning Lab
In this episode of Lauren’s Learning Lab, Lauren Magee shares how important sensory play is for young children in home-based learning environments. Lauren’s 3-year-old, 7-year-old and 9-year-old...
Learning with Nature: Awaking a Sense of Wonder
Exploring nature is a surefire way to spark young children’s learning. Children inherently want to learn which is why they’re constantly asking questions. They’re full...
Lauren’s Learning Lab – Summer Series: Back to Nature
Going outdoors brightens everyone’s mood, especially the moods of Lauren Magee’s 3 young children. This summer, Lauren’s Learning Lab heads outside for a much needed reset. Follow Lauren and...
Blocks: Play with Toys the Natural Way, Part 2 – Lauren’s Learning Lab, Featuring Dr. Carla Horwitz
In this episode, mom, architect and teacher, Lauren Magee, continues her conversation with Yale University’s Dr. Carla Horwitz about Unit Blocks and what makes them...
Blocks: Play with Toys the Natural Way – Lauren’s Learning Lab, Featuring Dr. Carla Horwitz
In this episode of Lauren’s Learning Lab, mom, architect and teacher, Lauren Magee is joined by Carla Horwitz MS, Dip. Ed, Ed. D and Child Study Center...
