Planning for Outdoor Learning in Kindergarten

I love collaborating with my other team members in our Kindergarten team and love that we can plan together for our outdoor learning. We have a team of 14 staff members so this is a big collaborative effort!

Our Outdoor Learning Schedule:

40 minutes of outdoor learning first thing in the morning with staggered entry for small group instruction.

40 minutes of outdoor learning at the end of the day.

This schedule provides less transitions in our day for students. They only have to undress once during the day and get dressed to go outside at the end of the day. We do not go outside for a recess but have two 40 minute nutrition breaks where students eat and then often do gross motor activities to help keep them focused for the day.

During outside learning each teacher has a "role" where we sign up for specific learning centres to engage students and others are floaters who help with runners, behaviour management and any students who may need bathroom breaks etc. All classes have two teachers, so we usually ensure that one team member is at a centre and the other is floating.

As a team we collaborate on a learning template very similar to what we use in our classroom. We try our best to ensure we hit as many learning opportunities that we possibly can based upon the interests that we notice while we are outside learning together. The following freebie shows a basic template that we use in our classroom and what we try to purposefully uncover while we are learning together. Click on the image to see it!

Learning Centres on our Plan

Science & Discovery

Math

Language

Paint & Visual Art

Music

Gross Motor: Field vs. Tarmac

Fine Motor

Water

Sand

Blocks & Building Materials

At first, one team member took minutes and we documented what learning activities were being provided and which room was responsible for it. This member would print the page and post it in our shed as well as post it in our school conference for all the team members to print.  We found this very purposeful but often found that we ran out of time for deeper collaboration together.

Google Drive To the Rescue!

In response to this need, we found it valuable to create a shared google document and all team members bring an iPad to add their ideas during our planning. This has allowed all of us to input our contributions quickly and we can all glance at the activities quickly and then are more purposeful in our discussions. Our meetings have been able to be more focused and we are all happy that we can go home quicker at the end of the day!

How does your planning differ? I'd love to learn how other teams collaborate together!