Last week, the good weather continued.  I got to work with even more classes to explore our school yard. A few more classrooms took the tour of outdoor spaces. I also tried some new lessons with several classes, including making a connection between their classroom community and our school forest as a community.

Students were careful observers while outside, diligent explores while looking for animals and signs of animals and thoughtful in their documentation. I was pleased with how all of this went and that we had the time and resources for students to do this thinking and learning.

What I was most pleased with though, was the number of classes I ran into while I was outside. Over the course of the week, we crossed paths with a second grade class collecting leaves to identify the trees around our school yard with field guides. We ran into a first grade class collecting acorns for a math lesson. We also came across a fourth grade class using the outdoor classroom for quiet writing.

After only four weeks of school, I’ve already seen more students outside learning than most of last year. Sometimes all it takes is a simple reminder and a few examples. I feel like inspiration has become the norm rather than the exception, and that’s a pretty good place to be.