There has grown a heaviness in our souls over the past several years. We are bombarded daily with images of division, hatred, distrust, and violence of one form or another. We long for belonging, love, and peace, and at times they seem just out of our reach. Like most...
The children’s interest in the flow of water was still high when the weather became too cool for water play. Wondering if they might make a connection between the flow of water and the way a ramp works, we offered balls to go with the lengths of gutters they had...
This is a story in which dialogue becomes important to the play in the Outdoor Classroom, and in which play in the Outdoor Classroom becomes an element in the culture of the class. Early in the year, a member of our larger community came to make a fairy house with...
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...
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...
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,...
