by Pam Oken-Wright | Jun 30, 2014 | Outdoor Learning, Teacher Research
This story is set early in the school year, when half the children were four and half were five. The week before, they created holes in the sand and filled them with water, marveling at the way the water slowly disappeared. The holes became trenches, and the trenches...
by Pam Oken-Wright | Jun 29, 2014 | Classroom Design, Outdoor Learning, Teacher Research
Creating the Outdoor Classroom was a collaborative venture. The seed had been rolling around in my imagination for years, fed by my observations of the way in which the children played outdoors and of the way they grow a relationship with nature. We'd tried some of...
by Pam Oken-Wright | Jun 17, 2014 | Classroom Design, Outdoor Learning, Teacher Research
For many years, we had a red and yellow plastic and metal playground in a plot of mulch on a large lawn bordered on three sides by campus buildings. There was a magnolia tree that dropped feather-shaped leaves all year long and a sycamore tree that shed its bark and,...
by Pam Oken-Wright | Jun 13, 2014 | Teacher Research
M announced, "It is 100 days until my birthday. I'm going to make a 'keychain' to measure the days." Apparently, M remembered making an Advent Chain in December to help with waiting for Christmas. Every day in Advent, she took a link off the chain, and when none were...
by Pam Oken-Wright | Jun 11, 2014 | Teacher Research
MM had the idea to make a tall castle on the block platform. As she began to build, she was joined by three friends, J, MC, and C, who asked what MM was doing. "I'm making a tall castle," MM told them. The friends watched MM line blocks along the perimeter of the...
