Westminster Presbyterian Church Preschool
This year we have added garden planter boxes for each classroom. Each classroom will be responsible for planting and watering their seeds to ensure that they continue to grow. Each season brings new challenges and new opportunities to change or add new plants. Before each planting season, the outdoor classroom teacher talks to the students about the life cycle of plants and what is needed for plants to grow. Inadition we have seasonal natural materials that grow on our outdoor classroom and have added them to our mud kitchen for our students to explore. Other aspects that we have added to our classroom is loose parts. We have dedicated a section of our classroom to exploring loose parts, which allows for the students to use their imaginations and gives them the chance to use the materials in their own way. Through these changes we have been able to see children open up in a creative manner that was not there before. Through these creative endeavors we have been able to engage in on going art projects, where students are able to work on a project multiple days in a row. It has been fascinating to see what each day brings to these their projects.
Some possibilities that we would like to add for next school year would be to have monthly picnics on the outdoor classroom, where students bring their snack and enjoy it in nature with their peers while listening to the sounds of nature. We would also like to include more gardening around the outdoor classroom in more spur of the moment opportunities for the children who may not be ready to plant in their classes planter box. Inadition adding a visual clean up schedule for the children to see so they know what needs to be cleaned up before they leave the outdoor classroom.
