Dr Claire Warden
The Visionary Behind Floorbooks, Talking Tubs and Nature Pedagogy
Who Is Dr Claire Warden?
Dr Claire Warden is an internationally recognised thought leader in early years education, and known globally as the creator of some of the most widely adopted early years practices in the world—The Floorbook Approach™, Talking Tubs™ (1996), and Nature Pedagogy™ (2015).
She has spent over 35 years transforming the way educators around the world approach planning, documentation, and child-led learning through these innovative frameworks, her research and extensive published writing.
With a PhD in Nature Pedagogy and decades of hands-on experience in early childhood settings, her work brings together theory and practice in a way that’s both inspiring and accessible.
Claire’s career all began with a simple, but powerful idea: Children deserve to be heard.
Claire started her career by listening deeply to children - their ideas, questions, and theories. She was curious about their thinking, not just their answers.
During a postgraduate study, Claire was introduced to a group of children exploring the topic of electricity. Instead of the confusion she was expecting to see, she was stunned by the depth of thinking these young children showed.
When presented with real objects and time to explore, they responded with rich, thoughtful ideas that are never captured by traditional methods.
That moment changed everything - Claire realised that children’s voices aren’t just valuable - they are vital.
She placed a large blank book on the floor and began documenting their thoughts, questions, and theories - and with that, the first Floorbook was born.
Floorbooks would grow to become a global movement.
The Floorbook Approach™: Planning with and for children
At the heart of Claire’s work is The Floorbook Approach™ - a child-led, inquiry-based method of documentation and planning that invites children to shape their own learning journey.
This approach has a series of defined strategies that are collated in a Talking and Thinking Floorbook™. They capture children’s voices - documenting their actions, thoughts, questions, drawings, conversations and reflections that are then used to inform the planning.
But the approach goes much deeper than a simple scrapbook.
It begins with a Talking Tub™ - a curated treasure trove of objects and images that spark curiosity and open up dialogue. As children explore, educators capture their thoughts, ideas, and interests.
From there, the Floorbook becomes a living tool which reflects the group’s thinking, makes learning visible, and supports rich, playful inquiry.
It also helps to meet curriculum and inspection requirements without losing the soul of learning.
Claire’s original work in this area has been adopted in settings all around the world and is now a protected methodology in order to ensure quality and integrity in early childhood education.
If you’re interested in learning how to use Floorbooks™ to reshape your early years planning and documentation, we offer specialist training and certification, ensuring that you can implement this approach correctly.
Nature Pedagogy: Connecting Children to the World Around Them
Before the early years world got hooked on “outdoor learning”, Claire Warden was already developing a whole new approach that we know today as Nature Pedagogy™.
Nature Pedagogy™ is a completely original approach, devised by Claire in her PhD. thesis “The Creation and Theorisation of Nature Pedagogy”, that recognises nature as one of the world’s most powerful educational innovators.
Claire coined the term to describe learning that happens inside, outside, and beyond the classroom.
But Nature Pedagogy™ is about more than forest schools or outdoor play. It’s about creating a relationship between children and the land.
It encourages children to honour the earth, air, water and fire, as their own influences on the curriculum.
With Nature Pedagogy™ children can:
- Build confidence through risk and resilience
- Develop care and curiosity about the world around them
- Think critically and ask powerful questions
- Learn in, about, with and through the natural world leading to sharing a passion to act for the benefit of the planet.
This work has also had an impact on educators around the world.
From Scotland, to Australia and the U.S., thousands have been inspired by Claire’s approach of embedding nature into early years learning.
Claire’s Published Work
Throughout her career Claire has been a prolific author with over 26 books, guides, and practical resources written for early years educators.
Through her books, Claire has empowered thousands of educators to rethink the way they approach learning—and to do so with confidence, creativity, and compassion. Claire believes in the power of the writing process and how it helps us to think through ideas. From the first folders in 2001 on outdoor play, dramatic play and capers in the kitchen her work has become more defined and peer reviewed giving it a higher status and influence in practice.
Some of her most influential titles include:
- Talking and Thinking FloorbooksTM (1994, 2006, 2012, 2015) There have been multiple editions and over 89,000 copies sold worldwide.
- The Potential of a Puddle (2002, 2005, 2012) was the first UK publication defining a vision and values of outdoor play. Collaboration with Teaching and Learning Scotland.
- Nature Kindergartens and Forest Schools (2010, 2012) Mindstretchers. All of the key features of the first Nature Kindergartens in Scotland. Award winning Whistlebrae and Auchlone draw visitors from across the globe to experience Nature Pedagogy. This book shares what made them sector leading.
- Chinese versions of Nature Kindergartens and Forest Schools. Translated and published by the Chinese Governments Publication Department.
- Nurture through Nature - Working with Children Under 3 in Outdoor Environments (2007, 2012) Inspired by her youngest daughter and her fascination with nature based schema.
- Planning With and For Children – A step-by-step guide to using Floorbooks to plan collaboratively
- The Fascination Series (2022) – A set of nature-focused books exploring wind, water, earth, and fire in early years education. Curriculum experiences, Visual mind maps, case studies, risk assessments, Floorbooks and Talking tubs all in one area. These evolved to become innovative Planning Journals where the books leave space for childrens ideas to be added creating a collaborative book full of adult and child ideas.
- Learning With Nature- Embedding outdoor practice (2015) – A widely acclaimed guide on embedding outdoor practice where the idea of inside, outside and beyond was shared through diagrams of practice.
- Green Teaching - Nature pedagogies for climate change and sustainability (2022). Excerpts from Claire's Phd thesis created to make an accessible, inspiring book about how we can embrace nature pedagogy in our teaching to make a sustainable difference.
