Outdoor Class Room Curriculum Ideas

ARTS
One of the goals of the outdoor classroom with respect to the arts is to teach students how to look and see, making observations and recording. This can be done in many ways and at different stages of the child's educational development. An additional goal is to gain a broad understanding of the discipline as a whole and see how the concepts of art are involved in our everyday life and overlap with other teaching disciplines such as math, science, history and English.

As the students get older it is possible to bring in references of artists that have studied nature in the same way. A discussion of the realists will be helpful for lifelike depictions of nature. The impressionists relate to the ideas of observation and recording as they did quick sketches and recorded the light and "impression" at a particular moment in time. The abstract expressionist can help introduce the concepts of abstraction from the real. The Pop Artists can help reinforce the idea of the ordinary being something extraordinary. Land art and the idea of ephemeral works of art can help with the discussion of art that can be created from nature and displayed briefly. There are many relevant periods in art from which the students can learn basic ideas and bring these concepts into their own work; the ones stated are just a few suggestions.

General Art Projects-
- Make prints and rubbings from leaves using crayons and wax paper or chalks and construction paper.
- Attempt to recreate the color palette of the outdoor with paints. Try to match the colors of the flowers and the different greens of the trees. (Acrylic paints)
- Make rubbings of different tree barks. Use the patterns in a collage.
- Pressing flowers.
- Blind Contour drawing outside, concentrate on observation of nature. Move on to sketching of outdoor but continue the studded attention to detail.
- Ephemeral Sculptures.

Observing & Recording
- Draw map of your outdoor classroom from memory. It doesn't have to be specific or accurate just what you remember. Then go out side and draw another map outside of the same area. Compare the two and see why they are different. What does that say about the different areas of the classroom?
- Looking for Rhythms and/or Symmetry- The students are asked to look at the environment in their outdoor classroom and identify rhythms and symmetries that they see. These can be found on the large scale (groups of trees etc.) or the small scale (number of leaves, the veins in leaves, branching of the trees etc.) Math can be introduced in terms of counting the rhythmic units or through a study of fibonnaci.
- Collecting and collage material- Students can walk through the outdoor classroom and collect materials natural or others that are in the area. Then the can make a collage out of the found objects.
- Ideas of Abstraction- Discuss the issues of abstraction. Make up symbols that represent different aspect of environment. Do a drawing or painting using these abstraction principles.

There are many different ways to think about art projects and their life span. Be conscious of how long the project is intended to last: day, week, year, several years.
As the students get older it might make sense to include projects in the curriculum that develop throughout the year or over years.

Concepts of music and dance can also be incorporated into the outdoor classroom.
Music
- Sensory Walk- Walk through the outdoor class room and take note of the different noises you hear. (Cars, water, wind, animals). Record those sound on paper using different notations for the different tones and incorporating the length of the sound as well. They should also look for rhythms.
Dance
- Shadow Dances- Investigate the shadow shapes the tress and buildings make. Think about the concepts of light and shadow. The students can pair up try to shadow each other in their movement. Separately the students can investigate altering shadow shapes by moving and forming their bodies in different ways.

SCIENCE

The importance of observation is relevant to science as well as art. There are a variety of science projects that are feasible dealing with water flow, water quality, analysis of plant reproduction etc. I will just describe one such project which is well suited to this specific outdoor classroom.

Most of the soil below the trees is left uncovered by grass. Part of an ongoing project with the students would be to take soil samples of the ground below the different tree species and chart the changes over time paying attention to color, mineral content, moisture levels etc.

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