Nature’s Classroom: Supporting Academic and Core Social-Emotional Skills
By Jeannie Russell
Spring is finally here again, and this year is an especially great time to offer our youth outdoor classroom and at-home experiences that get them actively engaging with the natural world around them.
Outdoor classrooms have a long history as settings for experiential learning and science instruction, and as a means for accommodating public health concerns over the years. Throughout our current pandemic, schools all around the world have made accommodations for increased student access to outdoor learning and recreation, recognizing that the risks of COVID-19 transmission are dramatically reduced in open-air spaces.
Here are five great nature activities that teachers and families can easily try, whether they are in an urban, suburban, or rural setting.
Sound Mapping: Watch this video to learn how to do a sound mapping activity. This is a great way to nurture reverence for nature, as it helps young people to slow down and attend carefully to the symphony of natural sounds that surround them. It supports auditory processing skills that are essential to classroom success, and serves as a wonderful form of mindfulness exercise that can reduce stress and help to center thoughts and feelings.
Collaborative Storytelling from Nature: This activity works best with a small group, but can be equally fun as a two-person game. Find a natural space that is clean and comfortable for sitting and have the young people each collect one natural item -- it could be a leaf, a pinecone, a rock, a piece of bark, a blossom, a stick, etc. -- and bring it back to a circle. Put the items in the center of the circle and have one child select from the pile and start a story that includes this item (for example, “Once upon a time, a dog found this stick and ran home to play with it…”). Then the next child in the circle chooses another item and continues the story by adding narrative that includes the new item. Collaborative storytelling develops speech and language skills, and enhances social awareness and positive interpersonal skills as well.
Choose a Tree, Tell Its Story: Trees are one of nature’s best historians -- they document the seasonal changes and are used by scientists to study climate and other conditions of the habitat over the span of (in some cases) centuries. Have students select a tree to focus on, and either make a circle around it or just sit under it. First, go around the circle and have each student share one attribute that they observe about the tree, and decide as a group how old they think the tree is. Then the teacher or adult in the group can start a story about this tree, from the moment that a seed dropped or was carried by a pollinator to this spot of ground. Encourage each student as you go around the circle to try to add interesting details to the story of how the tree grew, including interactions with animals, with seasonal and climate changes, with people and human infrastructure, etc. This storytelling activity can be enhanced for older students by learning about how scientists use data from trees to tell the story of changes in the local habitat. Including the photosynthesis cycle in the story is a great way to make this process come alive for students as a science activity. Exploring the exciting research on Mother Trees and the “internet of trees” can also be part of the preparation for this outdoor activity. Here’s a visualization that can be used to begin learning about Mother Trees and as a mindfulness activity.
Make a Nature Collage: For hands-on fun, this nature art activity can be used as a supplement to many different kinds of lessons about the natural world and ecosystem processes. Have students collect all different kinds of natural materials from a clean and safe natural space. Make sure that they don’t damage living trees or plants or disturb soil, but only collect materials that are on the ground already. Nature collages can take the form of mobiles, dioramas, posters, or statues. Let students explore many different media in designing and making their nature art if possible, and then have them create a narrative about their nature artwork that either tells an imaginative story about the materials used or describes some of the natural processes that went into their lifecycle and the surrounding habitat.
You can find many more ideas of ways to make creative use of our natural spaces.
We have all had a stressful time over the past two years, and the value of increasing our students’ access to outdoor education and play as the weather beings to cooperate could not be clearer. Let’s look forward to a healthy and happy Spring and Summer as we foster reverence and support our students’ social-emotional and learning skills through active engagement with the natural world we all share.