(upbeat music) - [Rochelle] On this sunny, but brisk March morning in Fort Mill, South Carolina, a dozen four and five year olds are busy playing in the woods.

They're not taking a break from the classroom, the forest is their classroom.

From the moment they're dropped off in the morning.

- [Teacher] Good morning to the flora and fauna and all around.

- [Rochelle] The children enrolled in the half day preschool at Anne Springs Close Greenway, spend the day outside in the park.

- Hey, what's your favorite thing about Greenway School?

- [Rochelle] Brittany Mills says it can be tough keeping up with her energetic four-year-old daughter, Everly.

- I enjoy playing.

- Being with your best friends.

- [Rochelle] When it came time to enroll in a preschool, the former early education teacher says she thought she knew what she wanted.

- As we kind of tour different schools, I realized like her personality and just her uniqueness wasn't gonna be contained by four walls and it wasn't going to be fulfilled by just inside classroom materials.

Being here out in nature, she's really able to just be herself.

- [Rochelle] The nature-based program places a strong emphasis on outdoor exploration.

Kids are encouraged to be creative, to build, dig, and get their hands dirty.

- We are constantly building activities and centers and processes around what they wanna learn.

For instance, my group, which is at the outdoor classroom right now, we are really into building, so we're doing marble runs, building castles.

- [Rochelle] Teacher Melissa Thomas says no day is typical.

Jenn Berman, the program coordinator says the children, and at times the weather, guide their lesson plans.

- I think the biggest adjustment for parents is learning how to dress appropriately for the weather.

We always recommend layers.

- [Rochelle] Being fully immersed in nature can be a challenge for kids too at first.

Megan Mazzucco says adapting to the environment was part of the learning process for her daughter, Maggie, who's now in her second year.

- Last year, she had a hard time getting her feet wet when they would go on Creek Day and she just had to work through that.

- Mazzucco says Maggie's confidence has grown and the nature-based instruction nurtures her love of creatures, big and small.

- I like animals and I want to be a vet because when you're a vet you get to see lots of animals.

- I love when she comes home and tells me about the creatures that she saved or you know the houses that they built out in the woods.

What's that?

I wonder what that is.

- [Rochelle] It might not look like a standard preschool curriculum, but Berman says they are preparing the kids for kindergarten.

- We talk about letters, numbers, shapes, pre-reading, pre-writing.

They're always getting opportunities to write, to read.

We just do it in a much more natural way out here versus looking at a worksheet that says A, B, C. - [Rochelle] Anne Springs follows the guidelines for the North American Association for Environmental Education, or NAAEE.

The school also adheres to South Carolina state standards for early childhood education.

- We're lucky enough to have a place like this where she gets to play in the mud and learn science through nature and experiencing the world around her.

- [Rochelle] Katie Lee says her five-year-old daughter, Nora, is thriving in the outdoor classroom environment.

She says the developmental benefits have been both educational and emotional.

- And I think through this program and the incredible teachers that they have here, they really helped her come out of her shell.

- [Rochelle] Instructor Smitha Sasidharan says the children are encouraged to talk about their feelings.

They also use calming activities like yoga, meditation, and painting.

- We coach them through their emotions, talking one-on-one, helping them figure out solutions.

- [Rochelle] The outdoor-focused approach to learning is exactly what Lee and her husband were looking for when they found Anne Springs during the Covid-19 pandemic.

- She was enrolled in a different preschool and we just weren't comfortable with the policies that they had in place.

And we happened to find the Greenway Preschool.

- [Rochelle] The preschool at Anne Springs first opened in the fall of 2019, with one class, 16 kids enrolled.

The pandemic hit later that school year and interest in the outdoor preschool surged.

Today there are four half day classes with a total of 60 kids and more on the wait list.

- And I really think the pandemic has helped kind of with that push of people wanting their kids outdoors and finding that, you know, we can do all the same stuff that we would do inside four walls.

We can do it out here.

- The increased interest in Anne Springs mirrors a similar trend nationwide.

According to the Natural Start Alliance, a research arm of the NAAEE, over the past decade, immersive outdoor classrooms have gained traction in the United States, particularly for younger age groups.

The alliance reports that between 2017 and 2020, nature schools more than doubled nationally to almost 600 and can now be found in nearly every state in the country.

However, research also found that for some populations access to these programs is disproportionate.

Disparities in access to high quality education are widespread across the United States and nature-based programs are no exception.

A research study in 2017 by the Natural Start Alliance found that all children are not equally represented in outdoor preschools.

White children are overrepresented while dual language learners and children with disabilities are underrepresented.

- I think the school could definitely benefit from our diversity.

It is something that we have continuously worked towards in our four years of existence and it's something we will continue to work towards.

- [Rochelle] It's part of the Greenway's mission to connect as many people as possible with nature, it's beauty, and it's bounty.

- Just seeing her in her element like it just makes me so happy.

She just gets to fully be a child and it's celebrated.

- [Rochelle] Whether they continue the non-traditional or move to a traditional classroom in the future, parents like Mazzucco and Mills say their kids are developing a sense of wonder and an appreciation of nature that will last a lifetime.

For "Carolina Impact," I'm Rochelle Metzger.