This month, we published a new book, one that has been a passion project for the past several years, and that has revolutionized how we work here at ZieBee Media. Read on to learn the story behind Coyote’s Pocket Guide to Connecting Kids with Nature.
Ten years ago, Ellen Haas co-authored with Jon Young and Evan McGown Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature, a weighty manual for the outdoor teaching approach taught at Wilderness Awareness School. It was a steady success and has become widespread among committed nature educators. But at 500 pages, it was awfully big.
Ellen and Lexie Bakewell, best friends, loved how this Coyote Mentoring worked magic as we raised our kids, and we firmly believed that every child everywhere should have access to the experience of deep kinship with wild nature. So, in emerging elderhood, we started up and puttered along with a project to simplify Coyote’s Guide and make it more accessible to ordinary parents, teachers, and outdoor guides.
When the coronavirus hit, we noticed a silver lining: that the one place people could go pretty safely was outdoors, so families stuck inside with kids online were suddenly breaking out and discovering wilderness in their own neighborhoods. Our materials were exactly what people needed, right now, so we speeded up and published.
Coyote’s Pocket Guide to Connecting Kids with Nature simplifies the big book, shifts things up and boils things down, to make it easy for families, teachers, and outdoor guides to apply the principles of Coyote Mentoring to their wide array of sites and situations .
Coyote Mentoring signifies a model of education that restores children’s wilderness sense, recruits their natural intelligence, and immerses them in learning the language of nature.
Coyote blows the sails.
Mentor steers the ship.
Mother Nature teaches.
This little book coaches the roles of Coyote — playful, curious, adventurous — and of Mentor — guiding and prodding wisely from behind. It describes 13 Core Routines for Connecting with Nature that are really all you need to know.
It lays out a common sense sequence for a Flow of Activities and provides a Best Of collection of games and ideas for outdoor learning, doing anything from a daily dog walk to a homeschool outing to a classroom field trip to a summer expedition. It provides tips on managing programs and includes an inspiring section on how brains function while thinking like wildlife in the dynamic weather and uneven ground of the outside world.
Join us on the journey to re-connecting to the natural world and embark on your own Coyote Mentoring adventure. You can pick-up your copy of the book from Amazon and get in touch to order copies at wholesale pricing to share with your communities.
Let’s turn the tide,
~Lexie & Ellen
“Nature is calling, let’s go outside and play.”
About the Author
Lexie Bakewell is a lifelong naturalist and retired teacher, who homeschooled her children all the way up. Now, having just finished her book, Coyote’s Pocket Guide to Connecting Kids with Nature, with her friend Ellen Haas – she is stepping out of retirement to share her wisdom to aid those joining the adventure of at-home learning.
