There are times in our work as educators, that call for us to slow down, take a breath and be in the moment with a child. Teaching in a Nature Explore Classroom can help us take that pause and gently wonder alongside a child. The pace and the questions we pose can directly impact the…
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Know anyone who’s squeamish about mud, but still intrigued? Cori Berg, Director of Hope Day School in Dallas, Texas, shares their program’s first ever International Mud Day experience. Along the way, Cori shows how honest reflection, a tangled mix of excitement and trepidation and her deep respect for each child’s experience mix together just like…
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by Diana L. Suskind with Judith A. Chafel STEP II of Stonework Play: Construction Where we stand can make us aware. In the foreground, Danielle, with her pink sparkling hair wrapped in a bun and wearing a clean pleated white mask that covers her face, comes out from her Home of Movement, made of stones….
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This is the final in a series of blogs highlighting “Growing with Nature: Supporting Whole-Child Learning in Outdoor Classrooms.” Contributors include Dimensions Educational Research Foundation executive director Nancy Rosenow and members of the Nature Explore education team. Visual/Spatial Learning: The ability to perceive the visual information in the environment, to represent it internally, to…
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This is the seventh in a series of blogs highlighting “Growing with Nature: Supporting Whole-Child Learning in Outdoor Classrooms.” Contributors include Dimensions Educational Research Foundation executive director Nancy Rosenow and members of the Nature Explore education team. Perhaps one of the first—and most enduring—lessons an educator learns is that creativity is the way children…
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This is the sixth in a series of blogs highlighting “Growing with Nature: Supporting Whole-Child Learning in Outdoor Classrooms.” Contributors include Dimensions Educational Research Foundation executive director Nancy Rosenow and members of the Nature Explore education team. “The importance of movement thinking should not be underestimated. If the six-year-old child does not have fundamental…
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This is the fifth in a series of blogs highlighting “Growing with Nature: Supporting Whole-Child Learning in Outdoor Classrooms.” Contributors include Dimensions Educational Research Foundation executive director Nancy Rosenow and members of the Nature Explore education team. Natural outdoor classrooms provide engaging opportunities for children to develop mathematical ideas through frequent hands-on investigations. The…
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This is the fourth in a series of blogs highlighting “Growing with Nature: Supporting Whole-Child Learning in Outdoor Classrooms.” Contributors include Dimensions Educational Research Foundation executive director Nancy Rosenow and members of the Nature Explore education team. Our fast-paced, technology-laden society limits children’s opportunities to engage in the kinds of unstructured interactive play that…
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This is the third in a series of blogs highlighting “Growing with Nature: Supporting Whole-Child Learning in Outdoor Classrooms.” Contributors include Dimensions Educational Research Foundation executive director Nancy Rosenow and members of the Nature Explore education team. Over the past few decades, outdoor settings for children have become increasingly sanitized spaces devoid of nature’s…
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This is the second in a series of blogs highlighting “Growing with Nature: Supporting Whole-Child Learning in Outdoor Classrooms.” Contributors include Dimensions Educational Research Foundation executive director Nancy Rosenow and members of the Nature Explore education team. “A child’s quest for knowledge about his world, which is energized by experiences in the outdoors, leads…
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