Outdoor Education

Outdoor education is a method for learning. It is experiential, it requires use of all senses and domains and its based
upon interdisciplinary curriculum; it is a matter of relationships involving people and natural resources. Outdoor
education is often described as a learning climate for the things which can be learned best outside the classroom.

Our project for this year in middle group was developing outdoor activities in our weekly program in order to develop
childrens understanding and respect for Mother Nature. This stimulated sensory experiences and imaginative play
an important part of kids cognitive skill building. We structured different activities suited for all the seasons. Thus, in
autumn, the children were undercover detectives, trying to find squirrels, leaves, acorns and chestnuts in the park. It
was a great opportunity to sing Autumn leaves are falling down loudly, feed the ducks in the pond and jump in piles
of autumn leaves. Our annual harvest festival, put to test everybodys motor skills and team work abilities. The teams
dug in the sand to find vegetables, climbed the monkey box to pick grapes and stretched to gather all the apples from
the apple tree. The highlight of the event was the tractor race around pumpkins. It was a great experience for a better
understanding of the autumn activities and nature changes.

In winter, everybody got dressed properly, went outside, had snowball fights, slid on the snow slide and built snowmen
while singing Do you wanna build a snowman?, their most beloved song from Frozen. During the first snow, the
children played Tag with snowflakes, discovering it was impossible to catch them as they melted once they touched
ones skin. It was a great opportunity to observe and understand water transformation in the freezing and melting
process. We had loads of fun, in spite of the cold temperature.

In spring, once the sun started warming up, we went outside to plant beautiful flowers in our garden. The children
made teams in order to dig holes and plant the fragile spring flowers. The highlight of our gardening career was
planting our own cherry tree. They watered the flowers and the tree several times, observed the evolution of the tree
from buds to leaves. It was a very sweet experience because the children sang and danced around the tree, giving it
many blessings, especially hoping it will give us cherries, but also apples and pears . Everybody stops to say goodbye
to the tree every day when they leave. Since April 1st is the International Birds Day, we decided to come to their rescue.
We used milk cartons to decorate and build houses for them, we made them cookies with seeds and we hung them in
the trees in our yard. It became part of our daily routine to observe how much the birds ate from the food we hung.

In order to expand our project outside the world of our kindergarten, we planned to organize a trip to the mountains
with the children and their parents at the end of the school year.

In conclusion, outdoor education is a matter of many relationships. The relationships concern not only natural
resources, but also people in society how they cooperate, how they communicate, help each other, listen to one
another, their level of independence, and their perception of abilities and limitations. Experiential learning requires
full use of the five senses and involves the three domains of learning cognitive, affective and motor. It develops
positive feelings and memories around kindergarten and the outdoors.

Livia Ioana
Oana Militaru
Mihaela Turcu