New Year’s Goal – I Spy Nature

It’s been a full year since we moved into our school.
We’ve experienced every season and have explored inside and out.

Last September we spent once a week heading outside to the playground
or to the woods behind the school but as the weather turned it happened less and less.

One of my goals for this coming year is to plan more activities out of doors,
by discovering new areas in our community and encourage more families
to participate.

A weekly activity will be held outside with a specific purpose to an accessible
location and regardless of the weather.

Knowing that some families won't participate out of doors and not wanting to
take their opportunity to come to school to play away,
we'll close early and spend the end of the morning enjoying the activity.

With this goal in mind, over the holidays, I put together these bags.

I call them our “I Spy Nature Pouches".
At the moment they hold a mini clipboard, magnifying glass and a pencil.
But depending on what we will be doing outside, equipment may be changed or added.

It might hold activity cards like; colour matching, animal track cards, shape cards, etc.

Our first outing will be to a local marsh that is known for having lots of birds.
Birds that will come and eat from your hand.
So I’ll include some pictures of birds for identification and a container of
bird seed.
The clip board will have paper so they can document what they see.

The bags were easy to make and it helped that my mom had given me a big pile
of upholstery samples.  They were already finished on three sides so all I needed
to do was sew two pieces together on the unfinished side, turn inside out and finsih
by sewing up the sides.
I used cording for the handles, if they are too long for a child they can easily
be tied shorter.

Have you made any goals for your program for the coming year?