Meet Our Team
While we do love to play all day, what we do is serious business. We are supporting the growth of whole human beings!
We are blessed to have a team of heartfelt people who care deeply about children, nature and their unique impact in the world on top of being highly capable adults. I personally cannot rave enough about the wonderful people I’ve had a chance to work with at Sprouting Knowledge. If you think you’ve got what it takes we would love for you to join us in our efforts to create more valuable outdoor programs for families in Kamloops.
What’s a Facilitator?
At Sprouting Knowledge we use the words mentors, role models, instructors, educators, leaders and teachers interchangeably but what we really are is facilitators of play.
We come to work fully present and ready to to support, guide, bridge gaps, scaffold higher learning and make connections to our world and to each other.
We provide the carefully crafted container and context in which children are masters of their own learning. Why? Because we believe children, and all human beings, are capable and competent learners.
Jaime Lintott
Camp Leader | B.Ed
Jaime loves how children are natural and intuitive artists, scientists, and explorers who can be present and uninhibited in their exploration. She admires the ways in which they are often content in the journey and the process resulting in authentic experiences, creations, and deep connections.
She loves to hike, bike and garden. As well as community projects and initiatives merging the arts and nature!
Jaime successfully commutes year round by bicycle in Kamloops and looks forward to many more years. She dreams of taking a year-long sabbatical to cycle The North Sea Cycle route with her family.
Taya Velikajne
Camp Leader | BA & NCCP
Taya loves being able to help children gain their confidence through play. Taya is particularly interested in physical literacy and how it translates to the all around development of children. She enjoys observing children learn and grow as she develops her understanding of their knowledge-building process and grows as an educator. She is a life-long learner who wants her students to feel comfortable exploring their ideas alongside their peers and mentors.
Taya coached gymnastics for eight years and has worked with all levels of athletes from toddlers just learning to walk all the way to competitive level. She enjoys exploring new places whether that be local or abroad. She loves all types of outdoor activities such as hiking, watersports and snowboarding!
In September Taya will be moving abroad to continue her teaching journey in a postgraduate teaching program in England.
Claudia Harding
Mentor Sprouts & Camp | CEA | BSc
Claudia has a lifelong passion for nature that has led her down a wide variety of paths working outdoors with children and adults to share her gifts. She enjoys spending time outside with her own two kids and gets out camping, hiking and paddling whenever she can. She wants to help children connect with nature so that we can leave this world in good and loving hands.
Claudia is an interpretive guide and Certified Education Assistant with her first aid as an Adventure Medic Level C completed June 2019
Taryn Polson
Mentor Sprouts Program | BSW
Taryn loves the unbiased magic children see in the world. She knows children communicate and learn so perfectly, and are capable of anything when given the right tools and boundaries in which to do so. She is delighted by the humour and honesty of children, by their capacity for love and care, and the accepting lens through which they see the world.
She loves tackling the many noteworthy and stunning hikes around the Kamloops area, including Battle Bluff, Mara Canyon, Sun Peaks, Savona Caves, and Gibraltar Rock.
She used to coach the TRU Cheerleading Team and still finds every opportunity she can to dance and sing!
Michelle Nagle
Mentor Sprouts & Oak & Acorn | Certified BC Movement Education Teacher | NCCP Coach
“Connection, play, movement and being in nature are so important as the foundation for a healthy sense of self. This is why I am so excited to be working in a place where these qualities are recognized and fostered.”
Michelle is a life-long educator and learner who has spent the last 10+ years facilitating parent and child programs, as a movement teacher and mentor in Waldorf schools, and as a Spacial Dynamics® practitioner. Herbalism, outdoor education, meditation and parenting all inform her daily practice. She sees the wonder and openness of young children and learns so much from them by being present and curious along the way.
Michelle is certified BC teacher in Movement Education with a current Emergency First Aid for Industry, which was re-certified in November 2019 and is a NCCP Community Sport Coach (#5800218).
Krystal Jeffrey
Founder – Connection Expert
I believe play is a pathway of connection to our truest selves.
I created Sprouting Knowledge as a way to support the freedom of children’s play and a return to risky-play. My goal is to help facilitate and teach adults and children how to play as well as to discover the importance of play in our daily lives. After observing and reflecting on the play of hundreds of children I’ve learned a thing or two that I share in my writing about play on Instagram and on my blog.
A mother since 2003, I have three children who will forever come for a wander in the woods with me.
I’m always up for a game of never-ending tag.
Krystal is an NCCP Community Sport Coach, Forest School Practitioner and ECE-SNE.
She picks at a BA of General Studies because she can’t commit or conform to academia and she also holds associates degrees in Accounting, Web Technologies and Marketing.
She is always learning and is multi-passionate.
Fabulous facilitators gone but not forgotten …
Matthia Vailancourt
Outdoor Preschool Facilitator 2019-2020 | ECE | BA
Beautiful, loving, well rounded early childhood experiences (with family, friends, and in childcare) are the most important factor in raising children to become healthy, whole-hearted, successful adults.
Matthia is an Early Childhood Educator with a current Wilderness First Aid Certificate.
Anna Kirkpatrick
Forest Kindergarten Facilitator 2018/19
Anna is passionate about nature-based education. She is a BC certified teacher with many years of experience working in classrooms and community settings.
As a newcomer to this ecosystem she is keen to learn more about the plants and animals that call this place home. Long distance running, camping, cycle touring and gardening are some of her favourite ways of connecting with nature.
Ashley Eklund
Outdoor Preschool Facilitator 2018
Ashley is an enthusiastic outdoor educator with a strong passion for youth and social change. Ashley believes our shared future and wellness relies heavily on how we grow our youth.
We know that we’ll feel better leaving this world to an army of connected, passionate, budding naturalists who know and understand the natural world around them.
Michael Jeffery
Spring Break 2017 Camp Facilitator
Michael firmly believes humans thrive most when we are in nature. A hiking and kayak guide, Michael is pursuing a degree in wilderness therapy while living off the grid in his yurt.