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Getting Started Taking your Students Outside:

Photo credit: Kerri Lanaway

  • Nature journals can be a great way to document and reflect on your outdoor learning. Some classes at Maywood use old calendars with animals or nature scenes are used for the cover, and scrap paper or recycled sketch paper is used for the middle. Another way to do this is by creating a notebook cover using a crinkled paper bag.
  • Items brought by students: nature journal, cardboard clipboard, pencil, water bottles
  • Items brought by teacher: first aid kit, garbage bag, gloves for garbage pick-up, cell phone, extra pencils

How Do We Prepare Families?

  • Notice home to inform parents of plan for outdoor learning – clear expectations
  • District walking field trip forms are given at the beginning of the year and cover all walking field trips
  • Discussion about appropriate footwear and rain-gear

Favourite Activities:

  • Free time in the forest
  • Nature Journals – sketching plants or other features of the forest, haiku or other poetry writing.
  • Sound Mapping – students find a quiet place and map on a small recipe card the sounds they hear. They include a legend for the sounds
  • Hug-a-Tree – students work with a partner and are blindfolded, spun around to disorient, and brought to a tree to use their senses to get to know.
  • Rainbow chips – students are given paint chips to try and match to colours found in the forest.

Here’s a resource for Getting Going with Outdoor Learning by Juliet Robertson.

Thank you for your contributions to this page, Kerri Lanaway, Dawn Howey & Roz Duchesneau!