Butterfly Hill Nature Preschool Inc.

Butterfly Hill Nature Preschool is raising money to purchase a newer, improved vehicle to safely transport our students to the beautiful natural areas in Alexandria and the surrounding region. Your gift will help us make a difference in early childhood education while supporting future environmental stewards.

Butterfly Hill Nature Preschool is a nature-based, year-round school with the mission to offer respectful, child-led education through play and discovery in nature. An important part of our school’s curriculum takes place in nature areas around our community. Our forest school program is offered to all students ages 4+. Forest school offers an emergent curriculum that is experiential, play-based, and inquiry-based while spending time outdoors in local woodlands, county parks, prairies and any space that is wild and green. Forest school is essentially a classroom without walls!

We need your help to keep our forest school program viable! Our current forest school bus has served us admirably for 5 years, but over the past year, it has become clear this aging vehicle no longer meets our standards for safe, reliable transportation. After extensive research, we have decided to purchase a 15-passenger Sprinter Van. We are asking for the community’s help to defray the costs of this substantial purchase. We are a nonprofit organization, and vehicles like this are not often funded by grant dollars or other publicly-available sources. A gift in any amount will help us provide exceptional outdoor education for students in the Alexandria area.

We believe that outdoor play in early childhood plants the seeds of confidence, creativity, and care for the natural world and each other. When children spend time outdoors, they develop a connection with the natural world. This reduces stress, improves self-regulation and self-concept, improves physical development, as well as makes children happier in general. By connecting children with nature, we help to create the next generation of environmental stewards. The benefits are endless which is why we are working hard to raise the funds to purchase a newer vehicle for forest school!

Thank you for considering a donation to our fundraising campaign which will help keep children learning and thriving outside in nature.