Oh Crap I Love My Toddler... But Holy F*ck

Today, I have a treat for you guys—I’m interviewing Chantel Zimmerman, the founder and creator of Sensory Garden and Play, on her first podcast ever! Chantel lives, breathes, eats, and shits proprioception, vestibular movement, and big play, and I wanted to have her on the show to talk about her educational philosophy and the programs that she runs, including her forest school. Chantel starts the episode by telling us about her background as a public school teacher and how her post-pregnancy move into tutoring led to her setting up programs based on sensory learning and eventually opening her full-blown forest school. She then explains how important it is for parents to give serious thought to what they want from childcare before choosing a program and that we often get trapped in an outdated educational philosophy that prepares kids to work in industry rather than for the modern world they’ll be living in. In her school, Chantel uses a Scandinavian model that encourages kids to learn from life and experience