A Story About Our First Outdoor Exploration at Our StrongStart

Hi StrongStart families,

We started our first SSC outdoor day by our StrongStart portable looking and finding what gifts nature left for us: branches from nearby trees, some of which were broken by intense winds, and smaller twigs. We could not resist picking a few wild flowers, blew on our first dandelions of the season, and found some leftover pine cones and chestnuts we had played with before. We brought our finds back to the centre and used some colourful yarn and pipe cleaners to attach them to our porch fence to decorate our outdoor space.

We started with weaving the yarn on the fence, and moms helped. At that point, A. was much more interested in exploring the length of his bundle of yarn, feeling it first, finding it stretchy and unfolding it to see how long it is. What a hands-on way to learn about math concept of length!

In the meantime C. and her mom were busy creating a nature web on our fence, attaching cones, twigs, appreciating the colour and shape of flowers and bendable pipe cleaners along with recycled tart shells. They were supplied by me as a way of displaying some delicate flowers and chestnuts she cherished.

A. had the idea to explore one of the big pine cones by throwing it on the ground. When he observed that some seeds were falling from the cone, this kept him engaged for a very long time. Over and over he was throwing the pine cone. He was mesmerized by watching the falling seed petals and he started changing the height from which he threw the cone and varying force. I knew that he was engaged in both transformational and trajectory schemes when children study, carefully and intentionally, the interesting changes that happen because of their action. That is why I was not encouraging him to go back to the original plan and why we continued with this explorations, abandoning all the rest of planned activities.

For privacy reasons, those photos do not include his face, but I can assure you he was so focused and engaged in his exploration.

Something of the experience reminded A. of making nests and birds, and he started talking about it. I asked if he would like to build a nest. After seeing his interest piqued, I provided a small wicker plate. I had some play dough we played with earlier at hand. Sure enough, the idea of making the eggs for his nest out of play dough soon came to him (this play was taking place shortly after lived experiences with eggs at Easter). He enjoyed adding to his nest by gifting bird with flowers and blooms and some seed petals from the pine cone.

C. overheard that we were talking about making bird’s nest and she liked the idea. She got her ‘nest’ dish and asked for a bird. The idea of making eggs was so exciting that little ‘egg gifts’ were soon attached to other objects.

In the meantime, A. continued to have fun with making eggs too and started decorating them with some seeds and wood chips.

The next day, the first thing L. noticed when he arrived on the porch for his indoor visit was the intricate nature web on the fence. He loved it! I promised that instead of outside storytime we could continue to add to our nature web.

L. was enjoying looking at the objects, touching everything, feeling the textures, soft and stretchy yarn. Baby R. was learning though his senses too! Seeing how much he enjoyed his sensory exploration, I provided L. with some leftover materials. He was ready to start creating and enjoying new textures.