Nature In the Classroom is installing awe-inspiring canopy ceilings inside children’s classrooms … an amazing way to connect young students to the outdoors, promote learning, and create a lifelong love and support for trees and nature.
Few experiences in nature compare to lying down on the forest floor and looking up at the canopy. The trunks of the trees, big and small, converge upwards into an umbrella of branches and leaves, a shimmering cover of living beings that capture and filter the sunlight that lands on the top and brings life to the forest creatures in the form of fruits, leaves, organic matter, nutrients, and energy. Pieces of the blue sky are visible among the branches and leaves, and the entire landscape is breathtaking form this unique perspective. A canopy of trees is inspiring, and those of us that have had the fantastic fortune to explore them up close understand that the treetops are filled with life and promise.
These feelings of peace and tranquility, of stillness and at the same time constant movement, of light filtering through leaves in a spectacle of reflections, are not being brought into classrooms by a small but ambitious nonprofit organization: Nature In The Classroom NITC (https://www.natureintheclassroom.org), based in California. NITC has installed awe-inspiring canopy ceilings inside children’s classrooms in California, and the results are so promising that they can’t wait to spread the benefits to other schools and classrooms across the United States.
Research has shown that images of nature and forests, real ones through windows but also large photographs of forests and natural landscapes, can accelerate healing, promote calmer behaviors, and infuse the environment with serenity and peacefulness, instilling a connection to nature and promoting learning and good behavior.
We want to help NITC succeed in this breakthrough concept, so we encourage you to visit their Global Giving link, learn more about this project, and support it. Click here to make a donation.
We know trees and forests are the foundation of life and a balance with nature. The TREE Foundation encourages you to help NITC bring these concepts to the classroom through your support of this project. Learn more about Nature in the Classroom by clicking here.
