Youth Nature Programs
for children and youth in the Quw'utsun Valley.
2024- 2025 ,
Vancouver Island
Forest Fridays, 7 - 15 yrs
Monthly Forest, 7 - 15 yrs
About this Series
Forest Fridays and Monthly Nature Programs
An Immersive Outdoor Learning Experience for Children
Program Overview
Forest Fridays offers a unique nature-based educational program designed for children ages 7 to 15. This program complements traditional schooling by providing one day a week of outdoor learning in a community-supported environment. Children engage with nature as their primary teacher, guided by skilled mentors, embracing a holistic education that integrates nature, community, and personal growth.
Educational Approach
Our nature based education is based on Connection with nature, people and self. Lead with the 8-Shields teaching model, developed by Jon Young.
- Fundamental life skills reinforced through nature-related activities.
- Creative expressions and physical agility fostered in natural settings.
- Understanding societal structures and musical exploration through environmental interaction.
- Nature-Connected Learning: Engaging with the outdoor environment in meaningful ways.
- Community and Respect: Building a culture of reciprocity and communal support.
- Hands-On and Child-Led Learning: Encouraging self-directed exploration.
Activities Include:
Exploring Animals in the Wild
- Identification of animal tracks and signs.
- Locating wildlife based on track and sign.
- Deciphering stories left by wildlife.
- Deepening connection to animals.
- Identifying bird calls and understanding their meanings.
- Animal processing, respectful trapping, archery, and hide tanning.
Our Forest Ecosystem
- Identification of flora and fauna in our ecosystem.
- Land stewardship and caretaking.
- Nature journaling and direct observation.
- Natural intuition and awareness training.
- Fostering ongoing relationships with place.
- Experiencing nature as a friend and teacher.
- Identification and sustainable harvest of wild foods and medicines.
- Observation and communication with plants.
Wild-Crafting Skills
- Forest shelter building, friction fire, and natural cordage.
- Traditional cooking and food preservation.
- Natural crafting: weaving, pottery, and jewelry.
- Primitive bows
- Tanning animal hides and making fish skin leather
- Foraging herbs and medicine making
- Candle making
Interpersonal Skills
- Tools for positively working through challenges.
- Interpersonal skills for group work.
- Strengthening community and culture through music, storytelling, and council.
- Practicing gratitude.
- Celebrating unique gifts.
- Honoring experiences as opportunities for growth.
- Expanding comfort zones and embracing challenging experiences.
- Participating in Rites of Competence and Rites of Passage.
- Developing resilience, personal growth, and self-knowledge.
- Communication skills, deep listening, and speaking from the heart.
Connection to Elders, Land and Place based learning
- Fostering and Deepening relationships with our local Coast Salish, Quwut’sun Elders.
- Learning Hul’qu’minum through Elders teachings, songs and stories.
- Respecting First Nations culture, traditions, and history.
- Exploring our role in decolonization and reconciliation.
- Utilitarian and cultural uses of plants.
- Learning plants, animals, trees and other nature elements in Hul’qu’minum
Your Mentors
Cari Burdett and Megan Farquhar, both highly trained in Deep Nature Connection and Wilderness First Aid, have been mentoring youth and adults for many years and lead our program with a passion for fostering deep connections between children and nature. They are supported by regular guest mentors, including local Quw’utsun’ elders who share their teachings and cultural heritage.
Cari Burdett
Lead MENTOR
For over 18 years in the Quwut’sun’ Valley, Cari Burdett has been committed to fostering a diverse community based on connection through music, relationships with our local Coast Salish Indigenous Elders (ReconciliAction through community building, music and service), and most recently, a dedication to mentoring all ages in the importance, healing and profound joy of Deep Nature Connection.
As the Founder of the Lila Music and Nature Center and mother of three older children, Cari brings with her over thirty years of professional training, degrees, intensives that focus on the healthy development of children and adults, with special focus on Anthroposophic & Waldorf pedagogy trainings, music therapy, pre and perinatal trauma work, plus communication models including Non Violent Communication and The Way of Council. Most recently, she has added to her skill set all she has been learning from Deep Nature Connection (including ceremony and rites of passage training) from her course immersion in Wisdom of the Earth, Thriving Roots, with ongoing Mentorship with Sal Gencarelle and the Helper’s Mentoring Society. Cari’s warmth and dedication shines through as she welcomes these diverse, yet richly connected elements to the Wilderness Programs.
Megan Farquhar
Lead Mentor
Since growing up in the woods of Vancouver Island, Megan has been involved in Deep Nature connection. Twenty five years ago Megan was on the original council that started Firemaker, an earth skills family gathering that is still running today and she is still involved. Megan has training in survival skills and earth based philosophy from the world renowned Tracker School in the US, and has completed a ten month Wilderness Living Skills program with Earthwalk Northwest in WA. Megan has a love of working with wood and has helped build a log cabin while striving to live with few modern technologies.
For her continued commitment to revillaging, reculturing and connection with self, others and nature, Megan has attended The Art of Mentoring at WAS , through Wisdom of The Earth Nature School on Saltspring Island as well as Coyote Mentoring through Thriving Roots, both of which she assisted with. More recently she has embraced the teachings of the Helpers Mentoring Society, adding layers to her understanding of what it means to support life, through Rites of Passages, and other ceremonies. Megan is excited to continue this journey of mentoring youth in nature beginning in September in the Quwut’sun Valley.
Marie Whimbey
Lead MENTOR
Meet Marie! She’s funny, mischievous, and a deep listener. She grew up on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, where the salty air fills the lungs and the ocean horizon is abundant. In her youth she found refuge in streaming up mossy bluff trails and unfurling in cool lakes.
She values creativity as a gateway to grow and invites youth into listening for nature’s invisible teachings. Marie relishes in spending nights under the stars and sleeping on the earth. Some of the many skills she loves are fire making, animal processing, butchering, skin tanning, foraging plants, awareness and opening senses in nature, singing, playing music and song circles, storytelling, and community building.
Her education spans the disciplines of nature-based mentoring, community event management, embodied arts therapy and clown. She is an experienced mentor and graduate of Wisdom of the Earth’s 2 year Immersion and Apprenticeship. For over a decade Marie has worked in youth programming and she has years of study in clown with the mentorship of David Macmurrey Smith in Pochinko style clowning.
Marie currently is a mentor for Thriving Roots full-time nature based childrens Wolf program and Lila music’s Nature program. She is one of the founders of Fire Woman, a business offering friction fire courses for circles of women. Growing in naturalist skills is now a way of life and a daily study, she is excited to continue becoming in this field and with the youth.
Claudelle Charette
Substitute
Claudelle (she/her) was blessed with a childhood of catching frogs and playing in nature under the canopy of sugar maple and birch trees, in Québec.
When she got a bit older she studied Fine Arts, horticulture and bioecology. It was in 2018, in Québec, with the Coyote programs that she discovered the magnificent world of deep nature connection and coyote mentoring.
The longing for deepening this way of living was so strong that she drove across Canada to do the 2 years program of Immersion and Apprenticeship at the Wisdom of the Earth school.
Since then she is mostly mentoring kids, and sharing her passion through ancestral skills workshops for women and adults. She brings both grounded compassion and playful enthusiasm to her work with youth, and is passionate about nature connection, community building, mentoring children, fire, hide tanning, scouting, play, sharing dreams, creativity and music making. Claudelle’s absolutly loves spending time with the River, tracking bear and elk while foraging for wild food.
Sebastien Arz
Apprentice
Sebastien Arz is a dedicated student of the 8-Shields lineage, having completed his first-year immersion with the Wisdom of the Earth school and currently apprenticing in his second year.
A passionate community song student and song collector, Sebastien also enjoys traveling and the simple yet profound experience of goatherding. His journey includes mentorship with the Helpers Mentoring Society, where he continues to deepen his connection to nature and community.
With a love for play, singing, and weaving with the flow of life, Sebastien embraces every moment with curiosity and joy.
Mentor Gallery
Testimonials
Course Information
Forest Fridays (Weekly)
DATES (2024-2025)
Fridays, 9:30am – 2:30pm (32 sessions from September 2024 to June 2025, excluding some cold weeks in January)
LOCATION
Lila Music & Nature Centre
COST
$60/day. 32 sessions: $1920. A $300 deposit is required to secure a place.
NOTE: Lila Music accepts Homeschooling Learning Funds. Please reach out to Cari to set that up.
Suggested Offering: We are honoured to have two Quw’utsun Elders guest teaching throughout the year. We suggest a minimum donation of $100 per family for Quw’utsun Elder Honorariums to help pay for their time and contribution to the Wilderness program. Thank you for your support.
TYPICAL DAY STRUCTURE
- Morning: Nature-themed games, morning circle with songs and gratitude sharing.
- Midday: Skill-focused guild activities like tracking, weaving, or bow making.
- Afternoon: Free time in nature followed by group games and reflective sit-spot time.
- Closing: Reflection and sharing of daily highlights and gratitude.
Join us for a transformative educational experience that nurtures lifelong learning and a deep connection to the natural world!
Deposit of $300 to secure space is required at final registration.
Scholarships are available on a financial need basis only. Please contact Cari directly to request a scholarship at cari [at] cariburdett [dot] com. Scholarships depend on initially having full enrolment in the program.
Monthly Program
DATES (2024-2025)
One Sunday per month, 9:30 am – 2:30pm: Sept 15, Oct 13, Nov 10th, Dec 15th, (no class in Jan), Feb 9th, March 9th, April 13th, May 18th, June 8th
LOCATION
Lila Music & Nature Centre
COST
Total for 9 sessions: $540. A $100 deposit is required to secure a place.
NOTE: Lila Music accepts Homeschooling Learning Funds. Please reach out to Cari to set that up.
Suggested Offering: We are honoured to have two Quw’utsun Elders guest teaching throughout the year. We suggest a minimum donation of $100 per family for Quw’utsun Elder Honorariums to help pay for their time and contribution to the Wilderness program. Thank you for your support.
TYPICAL DAY STRUCTURE
- Morning: Nature-themed games, morning circle with songs and gratitude sharing.
- Midday: Skill-focused guild activities like tracking, weaving, or bow making.
- Afternoon: Free time in nature followed by group games and reflective sit-spot time.
- Closing: Reflection and sharing of daily highlights and gratitude.
Join us for a transformative educational experience that nurtures lifelong learning and a deep connection to the natural world!
Deposit of $100 to secure space is required at final registration.
Scholarships are available on a financial need basis only. Please contact Cari directly to request a scholarship at cari [at] cariburdett [dot] com. Scholarships depend on initially having full enrolment in the program.
Registration
2024- 2025 Youth Nature Programs
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Cari Burdett and The Lila Music Centre respectfully acknowledge that we operate on unceded territory within the ancestral and unceded traditional lands of the Quw’utsun, Malahat, Ts’uubaa-asatx, Halalt, Penelakut, Stz’uminus, Lyackson, Pauquachin, Ditidaht & Pacheedaht Peoples.
Follow Cari Burdett & The Lila Music Centre
- 32228A Gibbins rd, Duncan BC
- + 1 250 710 4174
- cari [at] cariburdett.com
Cari is an amazing teacher who shares from her heart. She is an absolute blessing to our children. I'm grateful for her.
Sarah Macmillan, parent of youth nature program.