Living in Oak Cliff is a dream for Kat Meyer. The home she lives in with her husband and 5-year-old son, Max, has plenty of trees and a creek in the backyard, and her neighborhood is diverse and unique — "it doesn't get much better than that," she says.

But life has gotten even better this year for the Meyer family, with the opening of the Dallas Zoo's new nature-based Wild Earth Preschool — the first full-time school of its kind in southern Dallas.

"Being in South Dallas, we don't have as many programs for kids as North Dallas does, and we've always struggled with that some," Meyer said. "We just don't have the options. To have this program so close by, we are just incredibly excited."

The preschool program was designed to give zoo employees with hectic schedules access to affordable child care that emphasizes the importance of nature and conservation. Any extra room in the classes is open to public enrollment.

The program was years in the making, with the idea taking form in 2014. In 2016, the zoo began building a financial model and assessed the school's feasibility. Within the next year, classrooms were set up, staff was hired and the preschool became licensed.

"It’s really been a long time in coming and a labor of love all along the way," said Marti Copeland, the preschool's director of education.

Wild Earth has 15 students enrolled for the 2018-19 school year. The school is open to children ages 3 to 5, and there are already around 15 more on the wait list to join once they're old enough.

The Reggio Emilia approach inspired the preschool's curriculum. Teachers observe the children, their likes and interests, and from there they build the rest of the curriculum catered to the kids' passions.

Emery Baumhardt, 3, plays outside at the Dallas Zoo's Wild Earth Preschool on Thursday. (Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor)

"[Children] are kind of inherently passionate about animals and the things around them," Meyer said. "Exposing kids to some of those different environments, especially when we live in a big city and we don't always have access to that, I do think is important."

Katie Grimes, the preschool's manager, said the Reggio Emilia approach uses the environment "as a third teacher."

"It really allows us to take advantage of the resources that are here at the zoo and to incorporate a lot of the conservation development that would be going on," she said.

Wild Earth boasts a low student-teacher ratio, with about seven students to every teacher — a number it plans on holding steady as it hopes to expand its budget and facilities in the future.

"Part of the small classrooms also means that we're developing strong family relationships within our classrooms," Grimes said. "It's about developing a support system for each other while we're developing the connection with nature."

There are other nature-based preschool programs in North Texas, including Seed Preschool, which meets two times a week in an old school bus at Oak Cliff's Twelve Hills Nature Center, and a forest preschool at Bob Jones Nature Center in Southlake. Such programs, which have been popular in Europe for decades, have taken root in the United States in recent years.

At Wild Earth, school days are split evenly between indoor class time and outdoor learning, which includes walks and trips to the zoo.

With visits to animal exhibits, talks with zookeepers and animal habitat-building activities included in the daily schedule, the curriculum is designed to encourage students to develop a bond with nature.

"We want to grow the next generation of wildlife conservationists," Copeland said. "We want to guide children in early experiences in nature so that they can grow up to love and care."

CORRECTION, 5 p.m., Aug. 20, 2018: An earlier version of this story reported that Wild Earth Preschool became certified. It is licensed. The story also reported that there is an average of five students for every teacher. The average is seven students per teacher.