Biography - Josefina Prieto

Josefina Prieto is a Chilean landscape architect and agricultural engineer, who worked at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens and studied at The University of Sheffield in 1997-1998, for a MA in Studies of Landscape.

Since 2009 she has been working at Fundación Ilumina, a Chilean non-profit organization, developing “NATURALIZAR EDUCATIVAMENTE”, the first Outdoor Learning Early Childhood Program, which has been implemented in more than 54 Chilean underserved public urban preschools. She recently wrote a chapter about the programme in “The Sage Handbook of Outdoor Play and Learning”.

She is married and has 5 children, her endless source of inspiration. Besides her work at Fundacion Ilumina, together with her husband, they have an enterprise on landscape architecture Donoso Prieto.

Josefina met Jan White at EECERA 2014 and 2015, who prompted her to introduce mud kitchens at every ECEC. This has proved to be an outstanding source of magical learning experiences which has benefited the well-being of children as well as staff members (not to mention learning and developmental improvements).

Thank you very much Jan and Muddy Faces for your English booklet on “Making a mud kitchen”. It was my pleasure to translate it to Spanish, so that it can be of help to every Spanish-speaking person, interested in implementing this contemporary-ancient topic, so relevant for children.