"Best Day Ever!"

Some people question the value of children spending the morning in the forest, sure it is fun but are they learning anything? As my students took to the forest today there was no set plan of what exactly they would do, just some general ideas and tools to support their curiosity. As we sat by the fire Amy explained the three workshops the children could choose from. My group of children picked "choose your own adventure". We headed off with ropes, buckets and carabiners. One child quickly started wrapping the rope around a large group of trees. They attached buckets to the ropes and the longer they worked with the materials the more sophisticated their thinking became. They quickly realized that they needed to have the ropes at different heights to make the buckets move down the rope. They began asking questions; How are we going to hold the rope down? How can we get more buckets? Can we use the containers? It doesn't have a handle? Why is this bucket going faster than the other one? What if we put rocks in the buckets? Will that make it go faster? What if the ropes are steeper? This group of children worked together for over an hour on their zip line course constantly adjusting it, testing, readjusting and testing again. I did not plan on teaching a physics lesson to my kindergarten students today, but as it turned out it was a great one. As I looked around the forest I observed much of the same. Students quietly working with carving tools focused on their work. Children working together to build structures out of logs and sticks. While we were working on our zip line one child says to me, "This is the best day ever!" Yes, yes it was.