Nature Backpacks

On my school staff I belong to a Professional Learning Community that has been working on improving the outdoor learning and play space around our school.
    
We live in a beautiful part of the world with lots of forest but unfortunately, around our school, it’s on the outside of the fence.

It has taken all this school year to have our school property boundaries defined but as we’ve been waiting for answers we were also putting together a class set of nature backpacks.
 
The intention of having a class set, plus 2 for leaders, is that they are ready to grab and go.  Each backpack contains a sit upon, clipboard with pencil attach, paper, magnifying glass, ruler, measuring tape, crayons, and a paper bag for collecting.  The teachers packs will also contain first aid kits.

      This week StrongStart grabbed and went out to look for sticks.
           
The children used only the ruler from their backpacks.  Their challenge was to find sticks the same length, not shorter and not longer, than he ruler.
                

             
They did a great job of finding lots of sticks and holding them against the ruler to see their length.  We will use these sticks for another time.