Gardening in our Outdoor Classroom

by Pam Bergman

(Come by and visit my blog www.howlongisthishall.blogspot.com where I write about our early childhood special education classroom's adventures in the classroom, in the outdoor classroom and down that very long school hallway!)

Our outdoor classroom is constantly in a state of change...but I sometimes want to see more change!  Often I want things to move at a faster pace. I want to see more done. I want to give the children more opportunities for exploration. But, looking back; I quickly realize that we have come quite far!

We started with no outdoor area set aside for our early childhood students at all!  We often played on playground equipment that was meant for older children.  Sometimes we huddled around the one piece of outdoor equipment that was small enough for our children. Occasionally we pulled tricycles out of the large shed and often we took walks around the neighborhood.

Finally, we were thrilled when a small fenced in area was set aside for us, with a small donated piece of climbing equipment and an extremely small and extremely plastic playhouse...that promptly broke. That was it.  This was where two to three preschool classrooms crammed themselves for 20-30 min. each day for our outdoor time. 

And then, just a few short years ago, our outdoor space was expanded! Several of us had already begun some research on outdoor classrooms.   Our administrator knew this and went with a more natural theme for the area.  While we had varied experience and understanding of what all of this meant, we knew that it was something we could continue to learn about and could slowly add to and explore with the children as a joint learning experience.

Our new area created more space and more areas to explore, but, still most of the items were fixed. The children were more content and enjoyed exploring for a longer period of time, but we knew we would need more space and more items to manipulate at some point. The planners had used virtually every square foot of space in that area. In order to have some room for small or large items to manipulate we had to expand!

So, we planned and talked to people and ended up expanding our space....not a huge amount of extra space, but enough. The result was enough area to add a dramatic play area (our large playhouse), our group time area, a music area, a nature art area and a place to garden. Granted, these areas are not yet well defined, labeled or large...but they work. We also were able to add another large shed.

Today we started the next part of our outdoor classroom. We started a garden. All five classrooms spent the morning working the soil in the garden bed, planting flowers in the playhouse window boxes, planting bulbs in the ground, planting herbs in the round "pizza garden" and planting peas along the edge of the trellis.

The children were very excited about planting carrots and lettuce and one child talked to me about the SPECIFIC carrot she would like to eat when it grows!  Many enthusiastically smelled various herbs and commented on whether they "loved" the smell or it was a wrinkle your nose type of smell!  The children went in for lunch dirty, tired and ready to eat...and thoroughly hooked on planting more things!    

So, while I may become impatient with the slow moving progress of our outdoor classroom, I try to keep in mind that this is a long term commitment and a learning experience for all!   We have planned and explored with the children as we have expanded...and without that experience it simply would not be the same!  And if we can do it...so can you!

  

(Come by and visit my blog www.howlongisthishall.blogspot.com where I write about our early childhood special education classroom's adventures in the classroom, in the outdoor classroom and down that very long school hallway!)