books to help get you started!
Addresses key elements such as mapping, local history, community science, integrated curricula and more. She also suggests strategies for building community partnerships and implementation for primary grades.
Down-to-earth book-especially for elementary teachers who want to do science but are unsure how to go about it. The intensity of children's interest is unmistakable. And Ellen's low-key style reassures the reader that children in any classroom can do work that is just as fine.
A rich resource of ideas that will inspire you to tap into the endless supply of patterns, textures, colours and quantities of the outdoors and deepen children's understanding of maths through hands-on experience. Lots of outdoor play and engaging activity along the way is a must, as being outside enables connections to be made between the hands, heart and head, and lays the foundations for more complex work as children grow, develop and learn.
Children will see the natural world around them with brand new eyes, as they learn to follow its signs, hear its language, and understand its secrets. From the Six Arts of Tracking exploration exercises lead young readers on a fascinating journey of discovery as they watch, listen, map, interpret, and write about the sounds, sights, scents, and patterns they encounter.
Designed to provide teachers and administrators with a range of practical suggestions for making the schoolyard a varied and viable learning resource, concrete examples of how urban, suburban, and rural schools have enhanced the school site as a teaching tool. Herb focuses on the practical and the specific, including ideas for seating, signage, planting considerations, teaching/meeting areas, outdoor classroom management, pathways, equipment storage, raised gardens, and more.
The first-ever comprehensive book devoted to helping educators use nature journaling as an inspiring teaching tool to engage young people with wild places. The how-tos of teaching nature journaling: how to manage student groups in the outdoors, teach drawing skills (especially from those who profess to have none), connect journaling to educational standards, and incorporate journaling into longer lessons. This book puts together curriculum plans, advice, and in-the-field experience so that educators of all stripes can leap into journaling with their students.
This guide shows how adults can share their own skills with young children to promote understanding of safety in a stimulating way. It covers key areas such as: putting risk into perspective; how children learn to take care of themselves; supporting children after accidents and avoiding preventable accidents; and working in partnership with parents. This second edition has been fully updated to reflect current practice, featuring new material on risk-benefit analysis and the importance of outdoor experiences.
Fun activities and games to get children outdoors, to explore, have fun, make things, and learn about nature and help them grow up happy and healthy. Suitable for groups of children between ages 3 and 16, the graded activities help children develop key practical and social skills, awareness of their place in the world, and respect for the natural world, all while enjoying the great outdoors.
Written by a group of educators who have used the natural world as a setting for purposeful student learning and critical teacher reflection. Their stories are about more than just stepping out the door, more than offering students a breath of fresh air. For these teachers, the outdoors provides an authentic laboratory that promotes questions, investigations, reading, writing, listening, and sharing. Notes are kept, data collected, questions recorded, and observations documented.
Demonstrates how nature study can help students become careful, intentional observers of all they see, growing into stronger readers, writers, mathematicians, and scientists in the process.
Laurie invites you to join her class of twenty-one second graders as they visit a small stream in the woods behind a suburban elementary school, and she shares her reflections on class discussions, activities, and learning experiences.
Conducting science investigations beyond the four walls of the classroom is one of the best ways for young people to develop scientific thinking and to practice gathering and analyzing their own data. Outdoor Inquiries is the clear, concise handbook that shows you how. Outdoor Inquiries takes you step by step through guiding intermediate and middle level students to new and deeper understandings of scientific content, thinking, and procedures
Through academic research, practical examples, and insightful strategies drawn from classrooms throughout the United States, Sobel outlines the practice and pedagogy of this transformative philosophy of education.
Answers the frequently asked questions about choosing an outdoor classroom space, developing routines, building light infrastructure, and offers narrative examples of what a kindergarten Forest Day might look like. Accompanied by photos of students on their Forest Day.
This book will give you the confidence to offer the children in your setting adventurous and challenging outdoor activities, as well as ways to utilize natural resources to their best advantage. There is clear, practical advice on what you need to do, which is underpinned by the theory that supports the benefits of this approach.
