This week I was thinking about some of my favourite outdoor memories as a child.  Two of my most lasting memories are of collecting clay at the beach to make sculptures and meeting at the neighbourhood “hide and seek” tree for endless hours of play until my parents called me and my sister inside for supper.  Both of these memories involved interacting with the nature.  I suspect many of your memories also involve natural elements such as trees, sand, mud, or water.

This week our Full Day Kindergarten teaching team has been investigating the best ways to structure the outdoor environment to maximize learning. The outdoors is an ideal place for children to be themselves.  It provides a natural world for exploration and experimentation.  Wonderings blossom as inspiration and creativity are cultivated. Counting seeds and writing about the animal tracks observed in the snow help literacy and numeracy take on authentic meaning. Building a mud pie can involve designing, experimenting, creating, comparing and measuring.  Last week I tweeted out a picture of several students hovering over a toy frozen into the mud.  You literally could see the problem solving in action. These are higher order thinking skills that we strive for students to attain.

              Then there is the social value of outdoor play: games created by students-both older and younger-on the school yard often require skills in teamwork, leadership, negotiation, cooperation and persuasion.

            Although what we learn in the classroom environment is very important, let’s also remember the value of the outdoors as a teacher of children.  With the recent change in weather I am inspired to put on my hiking shoes and go for a long walk with my children in the hopes of learning something that cannot be found on the screen of a computer. 

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Model comes from Dr. Simon Priest’s article “Redefining Outdoor Education: A Matter or Many Relationships”

Models of Outdoor Education – a blog recapping some research on this topic. A bit academic but still has some good points!