It has been an absolutely gorgeous past few day, so we definitely took advantage. Kicking off with our "Start Every Day With Natural Play" routine, we headed outside every morning as soon as morning announcements were completed. Some days we will do phonics, some days will include writing workshop, some days may be our stations, and some days may have a little of each. That being said, every day will include natural play.
Observing the students, asking them questions, and letting them take the lead pays off handsomely. They are becoming better problem-solvers and critical thinkers while having lots of fun and becoming stewards of the land.
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| Snow's Last Stand (for now) |
We also took advantage of nature's boot wash by taking a trek through a puddle on the way in each morning.
Today, we continued our bird unit while also creating our next pen pal project. Rather than a written letter, we decided to share some of our nature knowledge by creating some bird art for our friends from Vermont. Using bird coloring sheets, some coloring tools, glue, and glitter, we made some shiny birds before planning for our nests.
Though we learned about nests a few weeks back, the snow and ice made it a bit tricky to create natural nests, Today, however, it was perfect to try it out. Reviewing our art supply nests and experimenting with our blocks and legos, we discussed and practiced how to make a nest and brainstormed what we might use before heading out and giving it a whirl.
The class was split into four groups and given four locations to collaboratively create a nest, Halfway through, I pulled everyone together, mixed up the groups, and sent them to a new nest so that they could see new perspective and use their previous understanding to add on to the new nest.
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| Mud is fun |
The results were wonderful. Besides seeing my kids work together, problem-solve, and compromise, they practiced amazing STEM skills , got a nice physical workout, and shared some awesome ornithological smarts. I loved hearing them talk about the materials they needed to make sure the "fledglings wouldn't fall out" and the "eggs wouldn't crack." Even though they knew these nests were actually for them, they still connected their bird smarts to their construction capabilities. They also were clever enough to use wood from their earlier-created winter dens, realizing the dens were no longer necessary to keep around.
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| Nest one |
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| Nest two |
Each student posed in a nest so that we could send these photos to our pen pals.
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| Nest three |
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| Nest four |
After checking out the nests, we reconvened at our oak tree classroom to share something we learned and map out our play time because when you work hard, you need to play hard. So we did!
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| Our Tree Train |
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| Off trail adventure |
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| Digging |
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| Play can get dirty |
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| A great work/play balance |
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