The First Week Back, Outdoors

The first week back is the week everybody wastes on rules and name labels. It is also the only week where a group has no habits yet, which makes it the best week to establish outdoor learning.

Establish the routine before you need it

Boundary walk, sit down, two minutes listening, one sound each. Run it every single day of week one, even when it feels unnecessary. By week three the class does it without being asked and you have permanently gained ten minutes a session.

Use it to learn who they are

An outdoor session tells you more about a new class in forty minutes than a fortnight of seated work. Who leads, who follows, who hangs back, who is careful, who is frightened of insects, who cannot sit still and who becomes calm outside.

Three sessions for week one

A colour hunt, which fails for nobody and gives everyone an early success.

A sound map, which is quiet, individual and reveals a great deal about attention.

A partner task where each child shows the other one find and says one thing about it that is not its name. That single instruction produces more talk than any icebreaker.

Set the rules with them, not at them

Rules children wrote get followed. Three is enough. Ours ended up as stay where you can see an adult, everything goes back where it came from, and nothing in mouths unless an adult said this one today.

Send something home in week one

One drawing or one sheet with the child's handwriting on it. It goes on a fridge and it does more for parent buy in than any letter.

Related

Your First Ten Minutes Outdoors is the routine in full.