Linking the Forest to the Indoor Classroom

The forest classroom has an infinite supply of resources for exploration and learning. When children are given the opportunity to move freely through the space and make their own decisions about what activities to engage in, the result is that each child follows their own path of discovery. How do we, as teachers, capture this wealth of information? How do we keep ideas that are generated outdoors alive in our classrooms back at school? One way is to look for common themes or threads that run through our visits to the forest. The materials we gather from the forest floor inspire both children and adults. By keeping these treasures close at hand in the classroom children have the opportunity to explore ideas in greater depth. For instance, one child noticed that the veins in a beech leaf resemble a tree. "Look!" she exclaimed, "There's a picture of a tree in the leaf!" This led to a comparison with other leaves on the ground as the teacher wondered aloud, "Do all leaves have a picture of a tree in them?" Soon, several children became interested in following this line of inquiry and began comparing different leaves. This idea is explored and extended in the classroom as children examine the class collection of leaves and other tree treasures.

Another theme recently emerged after reading the picture book, Log Hotel, by Anne Schreiber. Namely, what makes a good home for a bug? The children had already been noticing the many holes in tree bark and rotting logs in the forest. Now they had a clue about what they were... bugs could live in there! These ideas go back and forth from classroom to forest and with each new visit children continue their exploration and discovery. The addition of living creatures in the classroom adds more  opportunities for close observation. In school, children experimented with placing the class millipede in a prepared environment to watch how it explored and chose a place to hide. Back in the forest, children looked for more places a bug could live and discovered millipedes living under the leaves and deep in the bark of fallen logs where it was dark and moist.

Roots look like little trees, too!