Meithrin / Nursery Outdoor Learning
Class 1 Outdoor Learning
- We created a new area that focuses on nature. We have made a bird garden. We made bird feeders, put up bird houses and a bird bath to encourage the birds to come to our school. We will be learning how to identify the birds. We’ve also been working on improving our minibeast hotel.
- We have been making dens. Firstly, we made a den using large sheets of materials for us to shelter from the sun. We called this a reading den and have been enjoying looking at books in there.
- We also made a den in the forest school area using sticks, we worked together in small groups to come up with our creations.
- In our imaginative play, we created a crocodile swamp. We used slime and thought of words that could describe the textures.
- We enjoyed the opportunity to use tools outside , we have a new trinket box and we were able to use screwdrivers and screws to take things apart and put them back together again.
- Class 1 pupils have made a prayer garden outdoors. We tie ribbons to the fence when we say a prayer and have planted some flowers there.
Class 2 Outdoor Learning
Mud Kitchen – Pupils used a success criteria to create a cake for the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk.
Orienteering – Children also worked together as a team to complete an orienteering task where they had to think of questions for the answers they found about the story Jack and the Beanstalk.
Literacy and Numeracy – Pupils used their literacy and numeracy skills in the garden area. They wrote to Mr Davies and asked for some funding to develop the area. Then they planned what they wanted to plant and measured the areas for the different plants. They also labelled the vegetable patch
Creative – Developing our fine motor skills to create a garden picture in our outside area.
Class 3
Class 3 have had a very busy time with their Out Door Learning, developing their skills across the curriculum. They all enjoyed a treasure hunt with a range of numeracy questions on place value.
They also had a great time with ‘team building’ activities including leading a blind folded person to hide the beanbag, and ‘All aboard’ to get as many people as possible inside different sized hoops.
Class 3 have also been learning all about Bees this term, and have been working together to investigate lolly sticks.
Class 4 – Amazing Maze
Aim: To work out a ‘safe’ path (by trial and error) through the maze and get the whole team across.
Each member of the team had to successfully navigate the maze without standing on the ‘trap door’ squares. If they stood on the trap door squares the leader, who was the only person with the map, informed them that they had to return to the start at the end of the queue.
Only one team member was allowed to cross the maze at a time. In the next session pupils will review and evaluate how the activity went and devise ways to make it easier or more challenging
Class 5
The pupils in Class 5 have been developing their literacy and numeracy skills in the school’s outdoor environments (school field, yard, forest school area and trim trail). We initially focused on co-ordinates in the 1st quadrant, before moving on to 4 quadrants, where pupils worked with negative numbers.
To challenge our most able pupils, they were given the responsibility to plan and develop further co-ordinate activities to reinforce and enhance the learning of their peers.
In addition, we used cross-curricular links that embraced the Fruit of the Spirit, 5 Ways to Wellbeing and the positive attributes of a growth mind-set learner. This facilitated discussion opportunities and time for pupils to reflect.
Class 5 pupils have also been working on a series of outdoor challenge cards, which have focussed on teamwork, communication and resilience. Our young learners have successfully tackled a variety of diverse critical thinking and problem solving tasks. Not all learning happens best behind a desk and a mixture of indoor and outdoor learning opportunities have met the many different ways our pupils learn.
