Rock the Wild Children’s Benefit Concert – Let’s help students and families discover the gifts of our natural urban forests like Poole Creek Park in the heart of Stittsville.

Connecting children and their families to our rich local urban forests is driving our work.

• Nature connection
• Holistic development
• Community stewardship
• Therapeutic spaces

“All children need nature. Not just the ones whose parents appreciate nature. Not only those children of a certain economic class or culture or set of abilities. EVERY CHILD.”

Every urban forest has unique gifts to offer, supporting exploration, learning and belonging.

Children who grow up “knowing” the forest become the stewards that our community needs.

The future belongs to problem-solvers, collaborators, and innovators. Nature is where those skills take root.

The Rock the Wild Children’s Benefit Concert is presented by Outdoor Play Canada.

There is now over a decade’s worth of evidence showing that outdoor play and learning are essential for children’s physical, social, emotional, cognitive, mental, and spiritual health and development. Moreover, spending time outdoors from an early age helps foster a connection to nature and the development of the next generation of environmental stewards. Despite the evergrowing evidence on the multitude of benefits of active outdoor play, children in Canada are consistently not engaging in enough outdoor play and are thus not receiving the multitude of benefits outdoor play brings.

Entirely outdoor Forest and Nature School programs carry immense potential as an innovative way to promote children’s active outdoor play and address this need, as children spend much of their day in childcare and school systems. Moreover, getting children familiar and comfortable with outdoor play, in all seasons, from an early age may help set them up for a lifetime of active play and recreation.

However, Forest and Nature School programs exist as unlicensed programs, meaning they do not fall under existing public-school systems nor do they fall under the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program, which commits to reducing childcare costs to $10/day for families. The result is that Forest and Nature School programs cost between $50-70/day for families and are therefore cost prohibitive for many.

Recognizing this major barrier to access, there is a growing and passionate movement in Canada to make such programs more accessible to families. For example, we at Outdoor Play Canada have launched the Canadian Centre for Outdoor Play, a research-practice-policy collaborative, with a nature-based childcare program (on 500 acres of forested land here in Ottawa!) as our foundation. Our outdoor play and learning collaborative is leading a 4-yr research project, creating professional development tools, building national advocacy networks, and expanding the community of those passionate about this work. Our goal is to inspire commitment to advancing outdoor play and learning for the overall health and well-being of children in Canada. But we can’t do this important work alone – come join us!

Hannah Beach, international speaker and author explains that free play is a child’s rehearsal ground, where they experiment, take manageable risks, and build confidence, courage, creativity, and self-esteem. Through activities such as climbing, biking, exploring, and inventing games, children develop important cognitive skills such as attention, concentration, and memory. Outdoor play also strengthens self-regulation and emotional control, helping children manage distractions, stay on task, and build positive social relationships. Time spent in an urban forest can provide these rich opportunities for growth and supports Hannah Beach’s vision for rethinking how children learn, play, and develop at a critical time in our society.

With Magician Scott Dietrich, laughter & wonder are guaranteed! Voted the “GTA’s Best Children’s Entertainer” for 8 consecutive years, Scott is most recognizable from his days on YTV, when he introduced children’s favourite TV shows using his unique style of magic. Although magic is Scott’s profession, making children smile is his passion. Being an advocate for forest schools, Scott is thrilled to be a part of this important event.