“There was a butterfly here that immediately flew away”: play and relationships with nature

Abstract

Children in contemporary Westernized societies often have limited access to natural public spaces; their school experiences frequently take place within classrooms and walls, closely linked to a dichotomous view that separates humans from nature. At the confluence of critical childhood studies, new materialisms, post-humanisms, and ecological epistemologies, we examine the experiences of an ethnography conducted with children attending an educational project "in nature" in northern Portugal. Through participant observation and play with the children, we sought to understand how they relate to nature, how their play/cultures affect and are affected by encounters with the variety of living beings they encounter daily. Looking at these memorable encounters, we realize that, for the children, these dichotomies may not make as much sense as initially thought.