each year...

Each and every year we start the school year at Clear Spring School with an outdoor education block. The tradition is driven in part by our teachers' enthusiasm for being outdoors, by the effectiveness of the outdoors at getting our students motivated for learning, and by our student's love of playful learning.

Today our Clear Spring School staff meeting will also be out of doors as we plan to go to Lake Leatherwood Park for talk and hike.

I have been remiss in failing to thank Roger Beaubien for sending me copies of Minnesota Conservation Volunteer magazine. Published bimonthly and available for a subscription donation (nearly free for those with little money), it is an excellent resource for teachers and for parents who want their children to be engaged in something more than video games.

The July/August issue has a great article called, "How Big is That Tree?" describing how foresters do math out of doors, and children can, too.

Back in the late 19th century, those who began the spread of manual arts training in the US had recognized that as children were no longer engaged in hands-on learning in the fields and farms of our nation, they must become trained in school. Now as few parents take the time to purposefully engage their children in the outdoors, children are becoming less knowledgeable and less engaged in wilderness. Perhaps it should become part of the mission of each school in the US and in the world, to lead children regularly into fields and woodlands, along beaches and streams to learn more of the world they inhabit, and the world they will be responsible to preserve.

You can subscribe to Minnesota Conservation Volunteer for a small donation. Subscribe today.

Make, fix, create.