St. Luke’s Lutheran School

The Outdoor Classroom at St. Luke’s Lutheran Preschool is such a special part of our school. It is designed to have all the interest areas of an indoor preschool classroom, but it is all outdoors. Our interest areas include Open Area, Dramatic Play, Messy Area, Sand/Dirt, Music/Movement, Building/Construction, Water/Sensory, Stage, Art Area, Chapel Area, Salsa Garden, Sensory Path, YEZ (Young Explorers Zone), TEZ (Toddler Explorers Zone) and PEZ (Preschool Explorers Zone).

We have a set curriculum with units of study each month. Each week the preschool classes will visit about 2-3 interest areas each day for about 30 minutes. Two of the days each week are Free Exploration days, where the children can choose the area they would like to explore. The other three days are Instructional days, where the teacher chooses the area their class will be in that day. Our Outdoor Classroom was developed by our principal, Ileana Barbari, and has been at our preschool for about 10 years now, however we are always updating and improving our space.

We recently updated our TEZ area to make it more verstaile for our little ones. We also added a new learning space, the PEZ, to allow our VPK classes to explore even more. We also have an Outdoor Classroom Lab which houses our animal friends. They include Thumper, the rabbit, Spike, the land tortoise, and Einstein, the aquatic turtle. Our Lab also has interest areas like a magnetic wall, wind tunnel, document cameras, sensory bins, light table, and much more!