Bunyip Kindergarten

Bush kinder is a program that takes place entirely outdoors in natural bush settings – learning in nature’s classroom. Guided by the same learning frameworks as traditional kindergarten, it encourages children to explore, discover, and learn through unstructured play in nature - rain or shine.

The benefits are wide-reaching. For children, bush kinder fosters physical activity, creativity, problem-solving, and a deep respect for nature. For families, it supports wellbeing and community connection, often strengthening the bond between child and place. It’s a powerful way of learning that reflects our understanding that children thrive when they’re seen, heard, and given the freedom to grow - outdoors.

In Term 1 2025, Pauline Griffiths and the team at Bunyip Kindergarten began their first bush kinder sessions, the joyous culmination years of work.

Pauline and the team already had included in their Quality Improvement Plan that they wanted to be more visible in the community, and this led to their journey to developing bush kinder. It took much important work engaging with Cardinia Shire, running orientation sessions with families and children, undergoing rigorous risk assessment, and finding the right space, but in 2025, the dream of bush kinder at Bunyip became a reality, the first bush kinder program on shire land in Cardinia. Bush kinder at Bunyip has started with small steps and aims to spend more time in the space, building the capacity of the team, the children and their families as the year progresses.

In the lengthy preparation for starting bush kinder, Pauline engaged in training and consultancy work with a very place-based approach – how to make bush kinder work in this unique setting, with this unique community. The consultant, Annie Jenkins, works with Doug Fargher, the founder and creator of bush kinder. Bush kinder is relatively new in this country. It’s been at work in Forest Schools in Northern Europe for over 50 years, but in Australia a little over 10 years, since Doug developed it as a pilot project at Westgarth Kindergarten.

That pilot project was the inspiration for many educational leaders, including Pauline, to follow the vision for bush kinder in their setting.

‘The Westgarth Bush Kinder Pilot Project has exceeded all expectations. Children, teachers, parents and community have evolved with the program… Bush Kinder has positively challenged and extended them’

(Elliot S & Chancellor B 20212, Westgarth Kindergarten Bush Kinder Evaluation Report)

Pauline’s drive to develop bush kinder is a natural extension of ECMS’ emphasis on indoor/outdoor play. This is supported by extensive evidence about the benefits of outdoor experiences for children.

The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia tells us that:

‘Outdoor spaces provide for diverse physical activity and unique learning experiences not found indoors’ and that ‘natural outdoor spaces invite open-ended play, physical activity, spontaneity, risk-taking, exploration, discovery and a connection with nature… providing opportunities for children to engage with all concepts of sustainability.’

Bunyip’s bush kinder builds on their indoor-outdoor programme where the children are able to express and grow their own sense of agency, autonomy and risk assessment skills.

This means actively encouraging the children: ‘what do you think?’ and providing open-ended questions to scaffold their learning and problem-solving skills. Pauline regards bush kinder as so much more than a nice-to-have program. It’s responding to real need:

“Everyone's world is so controlled and scheduled, while diverse behaviours and needs amongst children just seems to be exploding exponentially.

“Research has shown from everywhere that those behaviours are minimised in a bush setting because there isn't that expectation of: ‘you need to come and sit on a mat’. Children will have uninterrupted time to explore and play and we're going to reap the benefits of that.”

Pauline has already seen those benefits first-hand:

“To actually see them achieve their goals is just amazing. From a mental health point of view just being out in nature without having that expectation is so important.”

And the evidence supports this:

‘Children who spend more time outdoors in nature are happier, healthier, stronger, smarter, kinder and more social.’
(Summary of White, R 2004 Young Children’s Relationship with Nature)

‘Children’s stress levels fall within minutes of seeing green spaces’
(Kuo, PhD, Frances E., and Andrea Faber Taylor, PhD.)

The inquiry-based learning in Bunyip’s bush kinder program will include all the formal documentation needed to assess children’s learning, but also embrace authentic documentation created in the space with the children. As Pauline explains, “we might still be drawing and making meaning from mark making, but it will be with sticks and dirt that they're creating.”

Pauline has described the early progress of Bunyip’s bush kinder as ‘amazing’, with the children making new discoveries each time, then unpacking and documenting them back at home kinder.

“All these naturally occurring conversations are scaffolding and building their conceptual knowledge as they resource their own learning and that of their peers. They are teaching each other in these moments of peer mentoring which is exactly what we hoped would occur.”

Bush kinder at Bunyip is already a tremendous achievement for Pauline at her team. Pauline’s indefatigable drive to establish bush kinder is underpinned by the importance of developing emotional literacy:

“The tools we give the children now in kinder in their little backpacks they'll be able to take on to school when they're not having the benefit a 1 to 11 educator ratio. All of those compromise, problem solving and resilience skills they're going to learn in bush kinder will prepare them for being put in a playground situation where there might be hundreds of other children. They will have had that opportunity to express their voice and to make those choices for themselves.”