Written by Melissa Leighty, Education Content Specialist at Learnlife
In 2020, many families caught a glimpse of something education has long overlooked. Learning moved out of classrooms and into kitchens, balconies, parks, and living rooms. Children learned through baking, planting, building, exploring, and experimenting.
But there is an important difference between learning that simply happens somewhere and learning that truly uses the environment around us.
At Learnlife, we often talk about learning beyond classroom walls. Not just physically, but conceptually — dissolving the artificial boundaries between subjects, and between learning and the real world. When children learn in meaningful environments, knowledge stops feeling abstract. It becomes lived.
Nature offers one of the richest environments of all.
The benefits of learning in natural environments are well established. Scandinavian approaches such as Forest Schools and Denmark’s Udeskole (“outdoor school”) show that learning outdoors can be a normal, everyday part of education — in all weather, all year. As the Swedish saying goes: “I ur och skur” — come rain or shine.
These models are rooted in strong cultural relationships with nature, but the principles travel easily. What matters is not the geography, but the mindset: nature is not a break from learning — it is a powerful context for it.
At Learnlife’s Eco Hub in Castelldefels, this idea comes to life daily. Just minutes from the beach and surrounded by natural spaces, learners move fluidly between indoor studios and outdoor environments. A project might begin in the garden, continue in the maker space, and end in reflection on the sand.
Importantly, nature-based learning here is not a separate subject or occasional activity. It is interdisciplinary and competency-based.
When learners explore plant growth, for example, they are also developing numeracy through measurement, literacy through observation journals, collaboration through shared tasks, and motor skills through hands-on work. The environment becomes the connector that brings domains of learning together.
Nature is not a static backdrop. It is alive, sensory, and constantly changing. Children encounter textures, sounds, smells, patterns, cycles, and living systems — and through these encounters, they begin to form a relationship with the natural world.
Where and how we learn stays with us. When positive learning experiences are tied to nature, children begin to associate curiosity, discovery, and competence with the living world around them.
Writers such as Roman Krznaric argue that our future depends on strengthening our sense of connection to the biosphere — understanding that we are part of it, not separate from it. That kind of understanding cannot be taught only through books. It grows through experience.
Many of us remember looking out classroom windows as children, sensing the world outside held something more alive than the lesson within. Learning in nature honours that instinct rather than suppressing it.
In natural environments, learning becomes open-ended and exploratory.
Mathematics appears in counting shells or measuring garden beds. Scientific thinking emerges in identifying insects or comparing leaves. Language develops through describing discoveries or explaining hypotheses.
In many schools, outdoor spaces are seen as places for play, separate from learning. But for children, the two are inseparable. Both play and learning emerge from the same impulses: curiosity, experimentation, and meaning-making.
At Eco Hub, this is visible every day. Learners might collect materials outdoors, prototype indoors, test again outside, and share insights with peers. The boundary between environment and studio dissolves. Learning becomes a continuous loop between world and reflection.
Nature-based learning is not only intellectually rich; it also supports wellbeing. Research in ecotherapy and environmental psychology shows consistent links between time in nature and improved attention, reduced stress, stronger mood regulation, and better cognitive functioning.
This is why some healthcare systems now prescribe time in nature to support children with anxiety, attention challenges, or low mood.
For children, the effects are intuitive. Natural spaces invite movement, calm, focus, and sensory regulation. They offer both stimulation and grounding.
At Learnlife, we see this balance clearly. A learner might spend part of the morning active outdoors, part creating in a studio, and part reflecting with peers. Whether sitting on portable stools under trees or building prototypes inside, the rhythm between environments supports both learning and emotional balance.
Eco Hub was designed as a sustainability and innovation learning space for ages 6–11, where indoor and outdoor environments work together. Gardens, beach, open air, and studios are all considered learning spaces — not transitions between them.
This reflects a broader Learnlife principle: there is no single best way to learn. Children benefit from diverse methodologies, environments, and experiences that support autonomy, competence, and wellbeing.
Nature-based learning is one powerful part of that whole.
Because when children learn in connection with the living world — touching it, questioning it, shaping it, caring for it — learning becomes more than knowledge.
It becomes belonging.
At Learnlife we use a range of learning methodologies to support personal learning. To find out more about diversifying learning methodologies, read them here.
If you’d like to see how nature-based, interdisciplinary learning comes to life for children aged 6–11, you can explore our Primary Years Programme at Eco Hub in Castelldefels, our coastal learning environment where indoor and outdoor spaces work together, and where learners spend their days immersed in both nature and meaningful projects.