Using Nature to have interaction Students in Learning
As a preschool teacher, I’ve been at the front lines of pandemic schooling. which has prompted my team to reimagine but we tend to foster joy and relationships with our students. As we tend to mirror upon our deepest values and commitments.
we tend to remember that nature is all around the U.S.A. and a wonderful platform for learning in and out of the varsity building. I’ve been obsessed with nature’s role in education, and teaching throughout the pandemic has shown the American state. but joyful—and necessary—Nature and learning will be.
My team and that I use nature to awaken our students’ imaginations, friendships, and interest in stories. we’ve inspired our students to travel on nature walks with their families throughout learning and to search out like leaves, sticks, and shells. These treasures spark their imaginations and hold stories that they must share with their friends.
GETTING STARTED
Upon our come to the schoolroom, we tend to attempt to take nature walks along within the fields close to our college building. but one amongst the most tenets of our approach to victimization nature for learning is that nature will be anything. a potted plant, recent herbs for preparation,
trees outside the window, ants on the private road. We ask to reimagine what counts as nature as we tend to work toward a lot of inclusive, antiracist, and decolonizing schoolrooms. Access to inexperienced areas and natural areas is proscribed for a few of our students.
Likewise, many faculties don’t have access to natural areas or parks. But, all students will interact in some style of nature and learning exploration, and that we see it as a part of our job to support them in doing this.
Our essential queries
are: but do I connect with nature? yet, will nature connect the American state with others? What do I like about myself? What do I like about nature? As academics, we tend to return to those queries and ask to expand our imaginations about the doable answers to those queries. Kids Learning Videos can be very helpful sometimes for preschool kids. will a student have a pet fish? That’s nature. will a student like to eat vegetables from their grandfather’s garden? That’s nature too.
BUILDING CONNECTIONS
Using nature as a shared foundation helps kids build relationships with each other. we tend to invite them to gift to the category about their nature adventures with their friends and families. And guide them to jot down stories about their adventures in their nature journals. daily throughout our morning meeting, kids share their experiences in nature with each other.
They discover what they need in common and compare nature treasures that they found. We’ve seen primary that these activities build connections, empathy, and curiosity in our learners. Even whereas exploring nature. students notice a similar species of trees, plants, animals, bugs, and alternative flora and fauna common in our region.
We persist weekly virtual field journeys as a category to explore nature close to and much. many of our favorite virtual field journeys are to the urban center installation and also the Monterey Bay marine museum. and that we like the live cams at Explore.org. These organizations provide high-quality live cams of animals and plants that area unit fun to explore. After we come to in-person learning, we’ll still the U.S.A. . These virtual field journeys to contextualize our learning and to find out a lot about nature far from us.
Children can learn to draw easily nowadays. Let’s Try Out Joker Drawing
LITERACY AND mathematics
My team and that I use these experiences exploring nature because of the basis for our acquirement instruction. with a play-based, Reggio-inspired approach to learning. As an example, we tend to use the “story workshop” approach from the opaque gem faculty in Oregon.
which integrates play and also the arts into acquirement and writing. As a part of our nature-inspired story workshop, we offer kids natural materials. leaves, rocks, sticks, and bugs to electrify their curiosity and imaginations, and to guide their writing.
kids learn to sound out words that area unit relevant to their nature escapades (e.g., sun or tree). They draw and label photos to inform a story about their experiences in nature and write sentences to travel with their drawings.
Nature and learning additionally is the inspiration
for our arithmetic instruction, making a shared context. In preschool, mathematics is usually about cardinality (counting) and basic pure mathematics. thus we would raise students to search out a numeration assortment from nature, sort of an assortment of ten rocks.
Or we’ll raise them to travel on a nature walk and draw what shapes they see. Finally, we glance for patterns in nature: animal and plant patterns, to abiotic patterns in rocks or water. I’ve found many resources instrumental in my journey toward nature-inspired education.
I’m a National Geographic–certified professional, and that I advocate their free, online course to any professional {interested in|curious concerning|inquisitive about|fascinated by} learning a lot about incorporating nature into the schoolroom. I additionally counsel trying to find skilled development courses in your space that support educators in teaching outside within the natural atmosphere. Nature is everyplace and maybe a wonderful vehicle for learning each within and outdoors of the schoolroom.
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