In this column, we put renewed interest in outdoor learning into context by reviewing the past 200 years of ideas and practices in nature-based education for young children.
Place-based education uses local cultures, heritage, landscapes, opportunities, and experiences to create a curriculum in which literacy, mathematics, social studies, science, and arts learning occur in the context of place.
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Teaching Young Children is NAEYC's magazine for anyone who works with preschoolers. Colorful, informative, and easy-to-read, TYC is packed full of teaching ideas, strategies, and tips.
Rich and sustained conversations in the classroom provide opportunities to learn about and practice using new vocabulary, to grapple with new ideas, and to contribute to longer-term knowledge and skills.
Using a fish tank as a project is a great way for teachers to provoke children’s thought, to engage them in the process of representing their learning, and to support their reflections.
Authored by
Authored by:
Andrea Anderson Jennifer Klutz Cindy G. McGaha
Forest schools are based on the belief that children benefit from being in nature, where they play and engage in open-ended, child-centered social and physical activity.
What if there were a sturdier option than butterflies for learning about metamorphosis—one that children could hold? Good news! This is possible when you study mealworms.
I think about being a parent and a teacher and observing children. Even experts can forget that there is a time to model and guide, and also a time to give space for the kind of learning that happens with uninterrupted play and exploration.
If the environment is the third teacher, there is no better classroom environment than the outdoors. I use our experiences and my notes and pictures as inspiration for our curriculum.
As an outdoor educator and “nature elder,” Heather Taylor tells two stories that stretched her personal views of what it means to allow children to have the freedom to make their own choices as they study nature.
