The benefits of getting children into nature are to increase the appreciation, awareness and perspective. An important activity is having the kids take the perspective of an animal in nature. This is a wonderful activity in order to increase the three aspects mentioned above. Playing outdoors increases creativity, cognitive development and confidence as a child. It is for students to be outdoors and learn outside, not just through the computer. The 6% of children who play outside needs to be raised and the fact that children know more Pokémon characters than nature animals is frightening as a teacher.
I believe as a teacher that the woods and outdoor classrooms can be used for more than just science. I would want to utilize the woods of our school to take my students to in order to find logs to sit on and delve into all kinds of activities across the curriculum. Creative writing and language arts are great aspects of the curriculum that can be involved in outdoor learning. This way the students can gain experience of outdoors while using creativity to write about their experience. Art is also a great integration for the outdoor classroom in terms of making projects by utilizing outdoor materials and learning that nature in itself is an art work. Mathematics can also be integrated into the outdoor classroom by utilizing concepts such as geometry, measurement, ratios, etc. I believe that every single subject matter can be integrated into an outdoor classroom. Even if the particular subject does not include using something outdoors, as a teacher you can just take instructional periods outdoors. All in all, I believe that my time learning outdoors was the most memorable and in order to build appreciation, confidence, creativity, cognitive development, etc. it is crucial to utilize the outdoor resources.
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