Amazing Outdoor Fun!

Monday, February 22, 2016

Today we started our day by staying outside for a little bit of extra time in the morning.  To invite the children to play outside, we brought a tarp to sit on, a bin of books, a basket of blocks, some clipboards and paper, and brought out some outdoor play materials from our storage shed.  The children had fun building with blocks on our new outdoor table, and created a castle with the building buckets.

We gradually welcomed the children back into the classroom, by bringing in small groups a few minutes apart.  This enabled the children to be able to transition into the school with more ease and less clutter.  

We asked the children to reflect on the differences between our normal routine and the routine today during our first focused learning time.  We asked them what they liked or didn’t like about starting outside and coming in to discovery time.  The students mostly agreed that they enjoyed the extra outdoor time and early discovery time.

Tessa sits back to admire her handiwork with Cala.

Cala and Tessa work on their structure.

Marleigh and Rhya look on and offer assistance as Brooklyn begins building a “cage” for her pet polar bear, named “Arctic”.

Zoe and Eden inspect the work they have done so far on their bucket structure.

Liam, Zoe, and Ajaydeep look at their shadows as they plan what to do next with their bucket structure.

Ajaydeep, Zoe, and Liam work on a bucket structure while a group of children sit at the wooden table in the background, building with small blocks.

Eden takes off her mittens so she can make notes on a clipboard.

….. and the wall comes crumbling down!

Sahneez and Henry relax with a book.

Zoe records her observations and plans on a clipboard.

Eden tracks down a new area to make observations while Vivian takes a break on the bench in the background.

Brooklyn’s cage for Arctic is taking shape.

Layla builds a structure with blocks at the outdoor table in the kindergarten play area.

Since our morning outside was so successful, we decided to end our day outside as well.  Here, Tessa and Lexi browse through the books on our tarp.

Tharsan takes a look at a book.

Marleigh looks at books outside.

Jayden, Vivian, Ashton, Cooper, Rhya, Zoe, and Layla work with buckets to create a structure.