St. Luke’s Lutheran School

Our Outdoor Classroom is designed to have all the interest areas of an indoor preschool classroom, but is it 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 & Garden, Butterfly Garden, Slavia Cafe, Growing Patch, YEZ (Young Explorers Zone), TEZ (Toddler Explorers Zone) and our newest area, 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 on that day.

Our Outdoor Classroom was developed by our principal, Ileana Barbari, and has been at our preschool for about 12 years now, however we are always updating and improving our space. We have updated all of our YEZ, TEZ, and PEZ areas with new furniture, manipulatives, and pavers, so that our STEAM classes can have more spaces to learn outside. We also re-vamped our Art area as well as added 14 new gardening beds for all of our preschool and Kindergarten classes to each have a garden space to tend to.

We also have our upper school Outdoor Classroom that is used by the K-8th grade classes. This has been a great way to extend outdoor learning to the older grades and continue what we are already doing at the preschool.

 

Learn more about this classroom on their certification page!