Creative Classroom Ideas
Westport
North School
Outdoor
Classroom
Due to the popularity of our foodie days in the garden these
last 14 months, this year our focus for the Tui School Challenge has been to
create and outdoor classroom and kitchen for whole school use.
Our feedback from the Garden Warriors is that they would like to spend MORE time in the garden ...like...everyday!
Recently we invited the Wonderful Staff of Westport North School to an Alfresco Staff Meeting in our outdoor Classroom...aka The Garden!
On the menu this afternoon was an ample serving of creative ideas for class involvement in this living resource we had created:
How can I can get my class involved?
·
Eating:
come in and whip up a salad together or a pesto, or just graze on our abundant herbs and greens... hand out your recipe cards or
post on the blog, kitchen resources & BBQ are in the lock up
·
Growing: sow some seeds & find a place to plant them out, just leave a note and map on the black board in the propagating shed...so we can find them!
·
Weaving Panel: this needs refreshing with flax
strands threaded through, then weave through flax and assorted found items such as bark etc…set
your imagination free! Flax can be found in the front garden
·
String
panel: hammer nails evenly around the 4 sides and go wild with coloured
wool making a geometric pattern
·
Knitting
Dolly: very popular last year, let’s use some rope this year & make something
more permanent or use flax and make a dream catcher or net …have a look at this
Utube clip for inspiration http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpdeWmAMDA4
·
Warrior
compostbots: we need 2 more, it’s time we had a Maori warrior design (paint pens are in the lock up)
·
Zen
Garden: very easy interactive installation that will be a hit with the
juniors. Plants are laid out ready, we just need some of the hockey turf or old carpet, then sand, pebbles and stone, and some drift wood rakes for pattern making...
·
Bottle
edging: finish off this boarder next to the high school, choose your own
design...
·
Bean bags: have a smashing time breaking up
polystyrene and filling old pillow cases, then inserting into chook food/coffee/Tux
dog bags for outdoor bean bags...then sit back and admire your hard work...
·
Bug
Hotel: continue adding to the hotel, make some welcome Hotel signs “Weta
Bed & Breakie”…have fun with words! See if you can guess who our likely guests would be...
·
Viewing
Window: needs a bright paint job, test pots on stand by in the lock up.
·
Sculptures:
make a bird bath from threaded/stacked terracotta pots, add more windmills &
improve the design
·
Flowers:
VERY popular, make wax stained glass windows, sand saucers, have a floral arrangement
contest
·
Mural: next year’s "Leave a Legacy" project with the Year 8's to create our own
legend and paint by number on the wall
·
School
Grounds: get out there and adopt a front garden to tidy up and nurture, do
a good deed and shovel and sweep up the sandpit sand
- Rain Gauge: start a graph and record our weekly rainfall throughout the year
- Ginger Beer: get our "How to make Ginger Beer" book we made out of the library & start a "bug", sell your ginger beer at lunch time to raise class funds
- Soup: have a class room roster and take turns brewing up a BIG pot of soup with our vegetables form the garden, once a week. Again, raise camp or classroom funds.
- Cook Book: put together our best "Garden Warrior Recipes form our Garden" and publish, take pre-orders and raise some camp funds.
- Compost: when emptying your bins, conduct a survey on the most popular fruit eaten, is there any seasonal variance in eating habits winter & summer, what percentage of the apple is eaten (parents look away now)...
- Viewing Window: graph how long it takes for the compost layer to break down, and long it takes for the worms to mix through the layers
- Student Council: start a weekly sandwich station, build your own sandwich with garden produce, or start a weekly lunchtime "Master Chef Challenge" with different students each week taking up the challenge with garden produce...
- Orchard: wander through and see fi you can name all the different trees, make a map & have a go at figuring out what fruit will be ripe in which season, look at the different shaped leaves, do stone fruit have a common leaf shape, do pip fruit have a common leaf shape, is an avocado a fruit, is a tomato for that matter?
·
Blog:
get your budding jurno’s onto the interactive white board and blog about your
garden excursion
·
Worms:
keep feeding, and study our worm population, their life cycle...there are lots of VERY cute baby worms at the moment! Design worm wine labels & come up with a marketing plan for selling our worm wine!
·
Science/Art/Engineering:
build some pallet furniture, design and build a water feature, design a mural
and apply to Resene for paint
·
Visit:
just read a book together in the garden, draw some pictures, nibble some herbs,
pick a class bunch of flowers, and dream a little! Feel the magic of our
tranquil space...
Other Resources
Don't forget ...THIS... our very Own Garden Blog...the ultimate Outdoor Classroom Resource!
EVRYTHING you need to know is right here on this blog...need an idea...just flick through the posts...any time spent in our Outdoor Classroom is sure to be a hit!
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