Gan Teva Educational Philosophy

Curious what an outdoor classroom has to offer?

Here are some points from the Early Excellence Centre for Inspirational Learning:

1 | Being outdoors means that you can do things on a bigger, grander scale than indoors

Construction can use large crates, long poles and wheels to create buildings and vehicles and big pieces of material to create dens and secret places.

It provides the opportunity to solve real logistical and engineering problems as structures rise and fall, reshape themselves with new resources and different ideas.

They can be as tall as you can reach and as wide as you can stretch. Unlimited by walls and ceilings, the sheer physicality of making something on this scale is only limited by imagination and ambition.

2 | Noisy, boisterous and vigorous play is less of an issue when you are outside

Running and shrieking, chasing and catching, rolling and jumping are all not only entitlements of childhood, but essential to development and learning.

Unfettered by the understandable need to maintain an acceptable volume level when inside, these can be moments of sheer exhilaration, endorphin generating exuberance that celebrate being a child.

The necessary experience of becoming breathless, heart pumping and muscles aching through physical exertion, is only possible in an outdoor environment because it has the space and the limitlessness to do so.

This is why large-scale, energetic games are a key part of outdoors, played together with cones, dice, balls and hoops.

3 | Outside is natural and messy

The weather is often in control of what happens. Puddles form in unusual places, rain creates and changes the consistency of mud, making it malleable and liquefied.

The wind mischievously scatters anything it can grab hold of, and frost, snow and fog change the ordinary into magical and mysterious landscapes of possibility.

Feeling the sun on your face, watching shadows form and disappear as clouds roll over the sky connects us all directly to the realities of the world.

The outdoors also invariably offers a multitude of experiences to explore weather and nature and a plethora of natural materials with their potential for play; fir cones and conkers become desirable treasure and autumn leaves an impromptu currency.

A stray pigeon feather becomes an unexpected object of sensory fascination and a spiderweb opens the world of how some animals live and survive.