About Us
He aroha whakatō, he aroha kaputa mai
If kindness is given, then kindness will be received

 As a family growing up in New Zealand, the outdoors has had a massive impact on our personal values.

​From growing a vegetable and/or flower garden as a yearly school project for the school gala day, to camping in some of Aotearoa, New Zealand's outstanding bush, river and beach locations, these experiences have formed the general desire to explore ‘Nature-Based Education’.
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The overwhelming majority of comments we get from visitors are about the homely, comfortable, family-feeling environment we have created.

Who We Are
Kate has been influenced by the Forest Schools of Europe and, in particular, the work of Educational Consultant Claire Warden and her "outstanding and sector leading" Auchlone Nature Kindergarten in Scotland. Claire’s work has documented children’s learning through their experiences in the outdoors. (link to Claire Warden's website)
Wendy has a long-standing passion for lowering our environmental impact, and has​ recently completed her own low impact, low energy use home by the Motueka River at Ngatimoti incorporating sustainable water usage, contained waste systems and solar heating.

Our History
Together we have built Nature Kids on our family-owned property, utilising and enhancing the large grounds with mature trees and garden. Wherever we can, we use natural resources of timber, bamboo, metal or glass rather than plastic. We have developed a rocky stream with hand pump to pump water down into the rock-bordered sandpit, 'turned a felled tee from the property into a feature which is used to develop balance and upper body strength, and recycled the iron power pole into a crossbar for hanging the swings between two birch trees. Our vegetable gardens grow strawberries, beans, garlic, peas, corn, zucchinis, cucumbers, parsley…….. The children always want to help and discover new tastes. The orchard is brimming with plums, peaches, figs, lemons, oranges, mandarins, apricots, pears, apples, avocados……
We have an earth pizza oven built by James, a family member, and we use this for shared celebrations and end-of-term events.  The chickens are always popular and going to collect the eggs and then deciding what we would like to cook with them is a favourite event.

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