I have been seeing this Great Blue Heron just about every time I visit this spot. Perhaps that makes it even more exciting for me when it flies off, and I get the opportunity to witness it. The anticipation kills me with delight, every time. Or when a group of students unknowingly goes near it, I watch and wait for them to see it. It is usually my favorite part of the day.
It was one of the best hikes I’ve been on with this group.
I’m grateful for log adventures.
Continue reading The Day They Carried that Log the Whole Way Home
The Coyote’s Guide to Connecting With Nature by Jon Young, Ellen Haas, Evan McGown
This book can be used as a textbook for outdoor learning. It has core routines, explanations for why we find games to be fun, and many activities to facilitate nature connection.
Continue reading Some Books Worth Reading and Other Resources
A respected colleague of mine (Inga!) often talks about what students really learn when they go outside. I love this because it’s so true! We intend to teach them about the water cycle, for example, and what they really learn can often be quite different, and equally as important. Sometimes they learn many things including what we intended, but what they really learn can be the most memorable.
This isn’t the best example of this, but see if you can hear what they really learned in this voice memo:
Here is a simple game of Tic-Tac-Toe. For this version of the game, the board is always located in a different place, off-trail, and in the woods. And it’s a bit of a hike to get there. The first three players on each team have the same colored bean bag and the tic-tac-toe board is located far way. It’s a relay race. If there is not a winner at the end of 3 plays (there usually isn’t), then the 4th runner can move one of their own team’s bean bags. It’s one of those games that makes you think, too.
Continue reading Fun Ways to Get Students More Comfortable Off-Trail
Once a year we spend a day outside with the whole school. We call it, “Outdoor Day.” This year we went to a local park. We built forts, wrote poetry, hiked, spread seeds, practiced yoga, and ate lunch and snacks. It was a lovely day.
After the day, I asked the teachers my standard “thumbs up, side, or down” question. I wanted to see how spending a day outside affected the teaching staff.
I asked, “Thumbs up if you feel better than you normally do on a Monday afternoon, thumbs to the side if you feel the same or similar, thumbs down if you feel worse.” I asked them to consider how they feel in their mind and in their body. If they are different, which feeling influences your mood the most? What did they say?
Continue reading What the Teachers Had to Say the Day the Whole School Spent a Day Outside
We arrived to our spot in the woods, and the students had expected to begin playing Capture the Flag right away. Instead, we sat in a circle, and I invited them to share gratitude. It was a beautiful spring day, and we were sitting in a beautiful council right after a brisk walk. It just felt right. Well, it felt right to me. The students groaned. They moaned. They complained. They rolled their terrible eyes and gnashed their terrible teeth. (Not really, but they might as well have.)
And so I began and sent it around the circle. The two people to my left were 9th graders who opted out of standardized tests at their high school, so they had the day off and they came back to visit us at their old middle school.
I said I was grateful for the nice spring day, for being in the woods, or something like that. Here’s what the former students said:
Continue reading The Day a Couple Former Students Came to Visit
The students are now used to it. We often check in with our bodies and our minds at the beginning of class. How are we feeling right now? Then we go and play outside in nature for 45 minutes, and we do another check in. Here’s how it works:
Outdoor Learning with Weslie 