You’ve just returned from an amazing outdoor learning conference, read an inspiring book, or joined an early years outdoor learning group on Facebook or Twitter. You are fired up. Totally inspired. You’ve got so many ideas jumping around in your head that you want to take your students outside immediately on Monday morning. What about the logistics? How are you doing to take the learning outdoors in an effective and successful manner?
There are as many ways to organize taking students outdoors as there are teachers to do it. At the end of the day, you will have to devise a system that works for your students, for you and for your learning goals.
Have no fear! You can not fail! Try something. If you don’t like it, change it. That’s what we do every year. What works for one group of students might not be as successful the next year. We have started with one system only to find ourselves making simple tweaks or major changes to it several times in a school year when necessary.
Recently, I was asked, “Do the children move freely from the indoor environment to the outdoor environment?” and “How do you know which children are in and which children are out?”
I’ll start with the first question. The answer is no….and yes. At the beginning of the school year, we do not let the children decide whether they will go outdoors or not and when that will happen. We have a daily schedule. When it is their turn to go out, they go out with their group.
The reasons for lack of choice at the beginning of the school year include
- Some of our students (3, 4 and 5 years old) have never played outside so if given the choice, they won’t do it because they are completely unfamiliar with it.
- The weather in our part of Germany is often rainy, or cold, or rainy and cold. Some children have never played in inclement weather so that would be 140 out of 180 school days they wouldn’t choose to go out!
- To give some children an opportunity to play with a wider variety of friends. If your “best” friend is indoors and you are out, you will just have to find a new friend to play with.
Later in the school year, the children are so familiar with playing and learning outside, that weather isn’t a factor in their decision where to learn any longer. As an outdoor learning teacher, I think that’s FANTASTIC! Introducing a free-flowing system can be done now with no worries.
“How do you know which children are in and which children are out?”
Our Reception class can have up to thirty students. We divide the students into two groups.
One group is called the squirrels. The other group is the hedgehogs.
We carefully balance the groups by gender, native languages and friendship relationships. At the beginning of the year, if we had two French-speaking children who could not yet speak English, for example, we would keep them together in the same group. It’s important to us that all children have someone they can easily communicate with, when possible. This helps the children settle in and feel happy in the first weeks of school. We keep best friends together at first, too, to foster feelings of well-being and safety. However, if relationships become possessive or too controlling, we then split the friends.
To ensure the groups are flexible and easily changed, we attached an 80 cm self-adhesive magnetic strip to the window near the entrance to our outdoor learning space. We made labels with the children’s names on them*. We attached a small self-adhesive magnetic strip to the back of each name label. We can easily move students from one group to the other group when changes are beneficial for the students’ learning and development. (*For privacy reasons, I have removed the students’ names from the photograph.)
When the students arrive in the morning, they often ask us which group goes outside first. It’s always our goal to put systems in place that help the students be as self-sufficient as possible. When they ask, we direct them to the calendar.
We have a calendar as is common in elementary school classrooms. Here you can see that the squirrels will be going out first on Thursday, May 24th and the following day, the hedgehogs will be going out first. On Monday, May 28th, the squirrels will go out first again. And so the rotation proceeds.
Another system we have to develop independence in the children is our “What to Wear” board. Okay, I’ll be honest with you. We came up with this idea because we were tired of answering the question “Do I have to put on a suit?” a hundred times a day.
The children would ask me, “Do I have to put on a suit?” They were referring to the waterproof suits we provide for them.
I would reply, “Yes.”
Not liking that answer, they would ask Mrs. Dermanowicz, “Do I have to put on a suit?”
When they received the same answer from her that they got from me, they would ask me again apparently thinking “Third time’s a charm, she’ll change her mind.” It’s never charming when Ms. Breedlove is asked the same question repeatedly.
So we made a “What to Wear” board by laminating a piece of colored card. We took photos of the children’s clothing and footwear. We printed the photos and laminated them for durability. We used self-adhesive velcro strips to attach the photos to the board.
On nice September days, the board might indicate that only shoes and jackets are required.
On cold, wet November days, the board would indicate that a suit, hat, scarves, gloves and boots must be worn.
If we are going to the soccer pitch to run and play group games, the board would look like this. The children are always very happy to go to the soccer pitch where they can run to their lungs’ capacity and hearts’ content.
As the school year passes, we give the children increasing responsibility to make their own decisions. Sometimes wearing the waterproof suits is optional. When this is the case we would display these pictures. This means if you choose to play with mud or water, you need to put on a suit. Of course some children say they will not play with mud or water and then they change their mind once outdoors. When this happens, we tell them to go inside, put on a suit and come back out to play.
These are just simple organizational tools we use to help us and the children keep track of who’s turn it is to go out and what clothing is necessary. The ideas I’ve shared with you here were developed, tested and refined over five years.
Go ahead and give some of your ideas a try today. Perhaps you could even get your students involved! Invite them to brainstorm solutions for any logistical challenges you’re facing.
