By Swarna Dutt

The Foundation School, based in New Delhi, runs classes up to the primary level. Being an afternoon school, the management lays emphasis on nurturing growth and learning in a stress free environment, where little kids have to their advantage a relaxed start to their school day. On October 12, 2017, students and teachers from the Foundation School celebrated India’s first ever Outdoor Classroom Day with a lot of zeal and laughter. To celebrate the day, the school focused on molding its daily curriculum into outdoor learning. Enthusiastic teachers came up with amazing ideas of how to teach their lessons through nature and at the same time create an environment where children can learn outdoors through play. Students from pre-primary up to standard 2 engaged in outdoor play and learning exploring 15 different lessons ideas. Here are a few glimpses of the celebrations…

Nature Hike

Students from the pre-primary level went on a nature hike to explore their surroundings using their five senses. They were encouraged to ‘touch the soil’, ‘crush the dry leaves’, ‘have fun playing with  their shadows’, ‘collect bugs, rocks, and flowers’, etc. They then arranged their treasures in different baskets based on texture.

Getting Eco-friendly

Children from kindergarten collected dry leaves from their school garden, collecting them carefully in newspaper bags. They then trashed all the leaves collected by them into the ‘Roly Poly’ (compost machine) to produce manure. The children also used manure previously produced by the Roly Poly for nourishing potted plants in their school garden.

Treasure Hunt: learning new words and using them to form sentences

Children from standard I went on a treasure hunt looking for word chits hidden in the sand pits at school. Each hidden chit contained a verb which the teams had to match to different sentences handed out to them in order to complete the sentences. Seen in this picture are the winners of this treasure hunt!

Exploring neighbourhood services

Children from standard II were given chits with names of different neighbourhood services written on them.Service counters for each of these services were set up at the school. Children were then asked to visit the service counters and make use of the services mentioned on their individual chits, helping them learn about various neighbourhood services.

Swarna Dutt is an Urban Specialist at Action for Children’s Environments (ACE) Trust [www.acetrust.net]