Meet our passionate team of outdoor educators! Each of our teachers brings unique experience and a deep love of nature-based learning to Muddy Boot Prints. Our educators are ECE certified and committed to providing exceptional outdoor early learning experiences for your children.
Belva Stone — Founder/Owner
– Miss Belva
Miss Belva has been working with children for 20 years. She spent 12 years as a private nanny specializing in children aged 0-5yrs. During the latter portion of that time, she studied at VCC to get her Early Childhood Education certificate. In 2010 Miss Belva accepted her first preschool teaching job at a traditional Montessori school. She worked there for 4 years before shifting directions into outdoor education.
Along with being the Director of Muddy Boot Prints, Miss Belva is the chair of the SAP Non-Profit Board (that oversees the Saplings Independent Nature School ) and the OELA Non-Profit Board. The OELA is a non-profit dedicated to supporting outdoor educators in British Columbia as well as supporting getting outdoor education licensed in BC. Belva routinely offers presentations and workshops about outdoor education to local colleges and universities throughout the year. Belva has been an active community member working towards getting outdoor education licensed in British Columbia since 2016. The progress is slow and steady!
When Belva isn't teaching, presenting or doing admin work, she can be found with her fingers in the dirt of one of her many garden beds, or wrestling with her hand spun and hand dyed wool that she loves to create.
Marina Stamboulieh, Director of Vancouver Chapter, Flicker Lead Teacher
– Miss Marina
Marina is excited to lead the Vancouver Chapter of Muddy Boot Prints™ - Early Learning Outside. She joined the program in 2024 as a teacher and quickly fell in love with the rich opportunities it offers for creative play and connection with the land.
Marina has been an Early Childhood Educator and Outdoor Educator for many years. Her passion for this work began when she had her daughter (now all grown up!) and deepened through completing a Master of Education in Special Education. She is endlessly inspired by the diverse and beautiful ways humans grow and learn, and strives to create outdoor learning spaces where everyone feels they belong.
Marina's own childhood was spent mostly outdoors on a rural farm in Vernon, BC, on the unceded territories of the Syilx people, where she had the freedom to explore, take healthy risks, and encounter plants and wildlife.
Outside of Muddy Boot Prints, Marina volunteers as a Club Leader with NatureKids BC and serves on the steering committee of Strathcona Community Gardens. A lifelong student of organic gardening, she is happiest with her hands in the soil and would gladly live among her garden beds if she could.
Iuliana Banack - Co-Teacher, Flicker Program, Vancouver
Hi, I'm Iuliana, and I believe some of the best learning happens outside, with mud on your hands and sky overhead. I've spent the past five years working with children in outdoor settings, and in many ways I've been working toward this my whole life. Children have always been part of my world and I have just completed my ECE Certification!
What draws me to outdoor early childhood education is the freedom it gives children to explore, test their limits, and discover what their bodies and minds can do. I'm a strong believer in risky play - climbing a little higher, balancing a little longer, taking the kind of supported chances that build real confidence and resilience. Nature is endlessly curious, and so are children; together, they make for the richest kind of classroom.