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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This is the first 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. “When children were engaged in authentic play in the Nature Explore Classroom they were developing important skills—skills…
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We like to think of Dimensions Educational Research Foundation as a wise old oak tree with deep roots in research that feed the whole organization and inform the work of those in our broad network. At Dimensions we are serious about children’s learning. We understand the value of quality care and education during the early…
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Imagine a shoreline after high tide speckled with seashells, kelp and driftwood. The beach, filled with treasures more tantalizing than anything found in a department store, encourages children—and adults—to explore, create and imagine. With no specific set of directions—and powered only by a child’s imagination—an assortment of conch shells might be gathered and classified, or…
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