“LOOK!” screams a four-year-old with such joy that we know this isn’t a garden-variety “I want to share something with you” moment.

As the gang rushes to her side, they come to a complete standstill, frozen in awe.

Oh happy day! Some kind souls have shared a fort with the community! There before us stands the most wonderful teepee-shaped fort that we have ever seen. Forts have been popping up all over town this year—and I couldn’t be happier about this trend.

This 14-foot high monument has sparked wonder and curiosity in all of us. We have stumbled upon a STEM adventure! This is math, science and engineering play that allows the learning to come naturally and at each child’s developmental level. This is also sharing. It teaches children that our community creates beautiful spaces to be enjoyed by all.

“Who lives here?” asks Liam as he bravely ventures closer.

“Can we go in?” questions three-year-old Madison, not sure that she really wants to.

We do go in, and the investigation into fort building sets us in motion for the day. Do you remember building forts when you were a kid? Did the memory of that fort just resurface? If it did, you retained that memory and are likely able to build another.

These are the moments that we like to create for our early learners. Hands-on learning enables children to take their understanding to a deeper level so that they can analyze the information that they have collected and then apply this knowledge when they create their own forts.

After giving everyone a turn to observe and discuss the masterpiece in front of us, we take a good hard look at the fort and investigate how it was constructed so that we can build a fort of our own.

We discovered this fort (above) while hiking in our neighborhood.

“I think this fort was started from that fallen branch!” Harper hypothesizes.

This leads to closer observation as we determine that this fort has sides that were built with sticks ranging in size from large to small. By leaning them against the main branch, the architects made the fort longer and wider. We begin to get a better sense of measurement as we visually estimate the length and width of the fort.

We always add a few sticks or branches to any fort that we discover, and today is no different. The older children quickly begin to add branches—an activity that reinforces our perception of the fort as a communal structure. When our younger learners hesitate, we reassure them that they really can’t go wrong by adding a stick or two.

“It looks like a triangle!” shouts Elizabeth. This declaration leads to an animated discussion about shapes and ways to incorporate doors, windows and other shapes into our fort.

We have a geometry class happening before our very eyes! We are looking at two- and three-dimensional shapes and using visualization, spatial reasoning and geometric modeling to solve problems.

These are opportunities that are rich in learning, creativity and team building. We share theories and develop hypotheses about the number of people it might have taken to build the fort, how they got the biggest branches up so high and how they created a base to stabilize the entire structure. We also examine the bottoms of the branches and hypothesize that they were probably broken off during a storm, rather than cut cleanly with a saw.

We know that our forts won’t look like the ones that we’ve encountered. We’ll have to use whatever materials we can find in our own play spaces. But our observations give us a better understanding of the fundamentals of fort and teepee construction. These found structures are the spark of inspiration that we need to design a fort of our own!

It’s time to bring out the assessment chart because this gang is on fire! This playful experience in engineering involves concepts such as angles, inclines, balance and elevation. When we let children learn through play, movement and trial and error, we lay the groundwork for the kind of deep learning that builds new neural connections.

Once the seeds are planted, the children often continue to develop their fort-building skills in our program or in their own backyards.

When the Midwest experienced a rare derecho in August 2020—and every house in our area suddenly had a backyard full of branches—our students immediately began collecting the fallen branches to build forts in their neighborhoods.

They had joined the community-wide fort-building movement!

Notice the similarities? By giving our children long periods of uninterrupted time to play and investigate, we empower them to build their own forts and develop new STEM skills and insights that they will be able to transfer to worksheets when the time is right.

When our students returned to our program this fall, we began napping outdoors on a daily basis. Not surprisingly, when a parent suggested a weekend nap to their child, the child insisted on napping outdoors—in her fort. When children build structures, the joy comes not only from the building but from returning to this place that they have created by themselves, for themselves.

These are the moments when I thank our anonymous community of fort builders for “planting the seeds” of fort building with our young learners. These industrious fort architects may be 12 years old or 90 years old. They may be building these impromptu structures to offer protection from the weather, bring joy to others or simply provide a peaceful place for fellow community members to commune with the natural world.

These lovely forts are gifts of time, hard work and beautiful design that bring science, math and engineering into the lives of our youngest citizens.

Thank you for making so many moments of STEM learning possible through play with the children of our community! You inspire all of us! Thank you! You are truly changing our world!

“I found an empty nest! Can we keep it?” Owen’s joyful discovery captures everyone’s attention.

Three-year-old Avery comes running. “Are there eggs?” she asks her older and wiser five-year-old friend. “Can I see?” she begs. “Please let me see?”

“There are no eggs, just an old nest. Can we please keep it?” pleads Owen.

After a quick glance to confirm that the nest cradled in Owen’s hands is not harboring a feathered inhabitant, I grant my permission.

Owen handles the nest gingerly before realizing that it is sturdier than it looks. After a few tugs and a few moments of studying the nest, he very gently hands it over to the others.

We have a collection of nests. We love to study the materials used to build each nest, as well as the nest construction methods used by different local bird species.

We also try to guess the type of bird that built each nest and how many eggs might have been laid in these cozy homes crafted from sticks, grass, leaves, string, mud and other found objects.

I watch Ave silently investigating and collecting data as she turns the nest in one direction and then another. You can almost see the wheels turning.

“I think the bird used some litter [drinking straws, food wrappers and other debris] to build this nest.” Ave giggles. “And there are like a million sticks in here!”

“A million?” I echo.

“Maybe more!” Ave theorizes.

This moment gives me a valuable insight into Ave’s nascent number sense. Connecting numbers to quantities is a skill that will continue to emerge and evolve with age and brain development.

“The bird added string—and look at this piece of wire she wove in!” shares Maya. “It’s lightweight but very strong. How long does it take her to make this nest? I think this nest is smaller than the others we have.”

This is how we set our curriculum for the day—by following the interests of the children. When we return to our indoor classroom, we will dig out our books to learn more about the various engineering practices that local birds use to build their homes and compare this newest nest to the others in our collection.

Living along the Mississippi River as we do, we are blessed with the return of our beloved bald eagles each winter and spring. From December to March, these magnificent birds migrate south from Canada and often make our area their winter home. Some even like it so much that they make it their permanent home.

In the fall and winter, the eagles rebuild their nests to prepare for the hatching of the eaglets. Eagles nesting in our area typically lay their eggs in mid-to-late February, and the eggs hatch by mid-to-late March.

Once the eggs have hatched, the female stays with the eaglets while the male leaves to find food for the female and her hatchlings.

The eaglets grow quickly and are ready to fly—or “fledge”—by late May or early June. A number of webcams have been set up by organizations in the area so that we can watch the life cycle of the eagles playing out before our eyes.

This is where I struggle. We are a screen-free environment. I know that we can link to so much learning with technology. I know that I need to stop being so stubborn. I am that old-school playground leader who hasn’t embraced the many educational benefits of 21st-century technologies.

We weren’t always screen-free—and I have fond memories of the year when we observed a wee bit of eagle life via webcam.

I hated the screen, but I loved learning about our local eagles. When an eagle brought a large fish to the nest, we were spellbound. But the fact that we’d been sucked into spending time staring at a screen contradicted everything that I believed in regarding early education—and I was overcome with guilt.

So when the first warm day of spring arrived, we created our own eagle’s nest in the center’s outdoor play area.

“Declan, how big is an eagle’s nest?” I asked, measuring tape in hand.

“Seven feet wide,” he responded. “What are you doing?”

I quickly measured out seven feet and put a heavy rock from the rain garden on the spot. The children began adding rocks until we had a circle that was seven feet in diameter.

For a few minutes, the children pretended to be eagles living in a happy little rock nest—until one perspicacious preschooler called me out.

“Wait! This isn’t a nest!” Asa declared. “We need to add sticks and leaves and yarn. We need more!”

“We do need branches and sticks!” agreed four-year-old Joshua.

“Over here!” directed two-year-old Gabe.

Game on! Now we were learning, creating and analyzing. We’d taken what we’d learned during our screen time and translated it into real-life, hands-on learning that met so many of the math and science standards that they would struggled to achieve on a worksheet!

This was when we grabbed our books and discovered that an eagle has a wingspan of 6-8 feet. We also learned that a mature eagle has 7,000 feathers, weighs 8-11 pounds and has vision so keen that it can see the print on a newspaper at a distance equal to the length of a football field. These are the details that young children are likely to absorb.

Because bald eagles are most active from sunrise to 11 a.m. as they feed along the open water of our locks and dams, this coincides quite well with our outdoor times. Lucky for us, they return to their roosting areas in the afternoon hours.

After lunch, some time spent browsing through eagle books and a nap, the boys made their way back out to their new eagle’s nest. If they build it, they will play in it. They had been playing there for a good long time when, sure enough, up in the sky, an eagle appeared!

Yes, a  real live eagle! Would she think this was HER nest? Could she see the boys in HER nest?

As the boys contemplated the possibility of the eagle swooping down and landing amongst them, they scrambled out of their nest in pure terror.

The eagle did not land in our nest. But, sadly, our frightened little learners never returned. I left the nest in place for over a week, and some of the younger children played in it, but the boys who built it kept their distance!

I often find that most of the fun is in the building phase of the project. The collaborating, creating, adding, subtracting, analyzing and evaluating with friends is actually the play for building kids. This is the good stuff that happens with play; enough time to engage in deep, investigative learning; and, sometimes, just the right amount of technology.

Take time to follow the lead of your students and see where their interests and curiosity take you. Then match their learning up with your early learning standards.

This link will take you to the Arconic Eagle Cam.

Full disclosure: The male eagle will bring food back to the nest. This could be a raccoon, a fish or a mouse. It is nature. It is graphic. It can be addicting or terribly uneventful at any given moment!

When we build nests of our own, we often use this Scientific American site as a reference. But if you’ve lingered too long on the Arconic Eagle Cam link provided above and feel guilty about overdoing the screen time, you can just WING it—pun intended!

Ha! Let’s get outside and play.

“Sally, look!  My rock turned purple!” Three-year-old Eleanor can’t contain her excitement as she changes the color of a rock with her paintbrush. Ah, the joy of painting rocks with water. Yes, water!

I will be the first to admit that I really wanted to be the educator who LOVED paint and easels and smocks and all of the joy that it gave me on the one day of the month that I actually got to use those paints when I was in kindergarten myself. Yes, I wanted to be that educator!

But I discovered long ago that my vision of paint utopia was unrealistic, which made me feel like a failure of a preschool teacher. I have made peace with my aversion to thick, gloppy, messy poster paints and moved on to watercolors. I’ve perfected the art of keeping them all together in a bag and whipping them out with a flourish to entertain my early learners on a snowy Monday, feeling like a rockstar of an educator. Well, sort of, but not really. The unvarnished truth is that paint is just not my favorite medium.

But there is one kind of painting that I really like—and that is painting outdoors with water. If you struggle with the mess that seems to be an inescapable part of painting or your landscape looks different as we navigate the global pandemic, then welcome to my water paint party! Regardless of the age or developmental stage of your students, this kind of painting doesn’t get old. Simply dig out the paintbrushes and a water source and let the celebration begin. You will never, ever go wrong with water play of any kind! On hot or dreary days, just bring out the resources, including whatever you need to document the learning standards that you’ll meet, because this is going to be a hands-on, brain-building bonanza!

It took me years to figure out how to keep everything in one place for easy access when the mood strikes. Paint rollers or paintbrushes from leftover family paint projects work extremely well. Those bigger brushes and rollers are really great for building the strength and muscles in the hands, wrists and arms, which will make handwriting easier when the time is right. No need to rush that. We’re too busy painting with water, baby!

Wondering how to get started? Use what you have! There is no need to make a purchase for this activity. We like to start out small with younger children. I have all of these supplies from my earlier attempts at what I thought my paint play should look like. Setting the stage with simple materials like paintbrushes and water creates an environment that allows children to become curious scientific researchers.

“Will the rock fit in the paintbrush hole in the cup?” Scientific investigation going on right there!

“Wait! My rock isn’t purple anymore!” Eleanor has been so busy painting other rocks that she has just made her way back to her favorite rock. As her friends gather around for a closer inspection, four-year-old Noah says with a giggle, “It evaporated!”

Wow! It’s always a delight when friends can lead the learning with one giant vocabulary word like EVAPORATE!

“Watch. If I paint here on the sidewalk, it will disappear,” Noah adds. “The sun dries it up. It evaporates!”

Without a sound, the whole gang begins painting the sidewalk to see if their watery brushstrokes will evaporate as well. This is hands-on, child-led learning at it’s finest. So much is happening in this moment. We have children using their leadership and language skills and mentoring their friends. We have scientific inquiry happening at their level of understanding. We have PLAY!

Don’t be surprised if the sidewalk, chairs, tables or other loose parts make their way into this adventure. It’s fun to watch their brains light up with observations, predictions and cause-and-effect scenarios as the water changes each surface it touches. Preschool children have an innate passion to investigate and make sense of the world around them. By integrating science and mathematical discoveries into their play, we are giving them a strong foundation and understanding of their world.

As the children in the group begin to express wonder and share their observations, the water play generally takes on a life of its own. By bringing in buckets and pans of water, along with a collection of pouring cups and pitchers, we can extend the learning into the mathematical world of quantities, estimation and volume. All of this is data analysis. It may not yet be recorded on paper, depending on the development of your group, but you are planting the seeds for this activity in the coming years.

Add this to your toolbox of outdoor learning.

Of course, we often bring this activity indoors as well—usually in the early spring, when the snow won’t melt and the sun won’t shine.  My indoor setup usually looks something like this:

It’s a great crabby Monday activity that will surely lighten the mood in your classroom. Happy water painting!

“I found GOLD!” squeals Laura. Four little friends are quick to join her in the latest gold rush in the sandbox. In the wee hours of the morning, often when the sun is barely above the horizon and the coffee is still being brewed, gold will magically appear in our sandbox. Spray-painted rocks that will give our young friends hours of digging, collecting, hoarding and, hopefully, sharing.

Once upon a time back in 1886, the first sand garden was created in the yard of the Children’s Mission on Permenter Street on the North End of Boston. In the late 1800s, sand gardens were viewed as safe places for immigrant children to play in during the summer months while their parents worked in factories. Today, these early sand gardens are often referred to as America’s “first playgrounds.” As we reimagine education during the pandemic, perhaps we should harken back to a simpler time and create sand gardens for our young learners!

A sandbox seems so simple, but it is truly a blank canvas—inviting curiosity and creativity, exploration and investigation. It offers a soothing sensory experience and an opportunity to experience natural textures while experiencing the peace and simple pleasures of sand play. Peer pressure will entice wary friends to strip off their shoes and tentatively join in the fun. Placing a big “Shoe Basket” near your sandbox is essential for your own mental health. It will save you hours of searching for socks and shoes. When we add loose parts to our sand, we create opportunities for counting, collecting and designing. We can explore symmetry and patterns. By adding baking tools, we can explore measurement and estimation. Opportunities abound for vocabulary growth and lessons about location and position.

“Joseph, can you get the trucks to drive under our castle?” The children have been busy building and decorating large mounds of sand. Now they have moved on to cautiously digging out tunnels. Tunnel digging builds engineering knowledge as the children predict, problem-solve and collaborate with friends—all while spending long periods of time engaging in what appears to be play. Are you documenting this? Check those early math and science learning standards off of your list!

We can encourage children to mix sand with water to see how adding water changes the physical properties of the sand. This sand play allows the children to create models of their own making. What they imagine, they can create. They create plans, make observations and experiment with ideas. This is science!

As educators and parents, we often miss the opportunities and possibilities that sand play presents. It took me years to figure out that if I took three minutes to rake the sand and make it more inviting, my effort would be rewarded as more children engaged in hours of deep learning and exploration every single day. Consider preparing your sandbox as essential as prepping any other area of your classroom. If the sandbox is full of leaves, too many loose parts from yesterday’s play or any other undesirables, it won’t be, well…desirable! Make sure your sandbox is inviting, and you will “invite” the children to explore math and science concepts with a soothing blank canvas. Unless, of course, there is a major construction project underway. On those days, I gently place a tarp over the sandbox to protect the project until our pint-sized “construction crew” returns the following morning.

If sand is a new adventure for you, recognize and remove any obstacles early on. One important tip is that you must have a water source nearby to make the sand packable. A garden hose, gallon buckets of water or nearby rain barrels will open up a treasure trove of opportunities that are not possible with dry sand. Shade is another important element to consider. You can create shade with a large umbrella if you do not have a tree to shade your sandbox. Or you can use parachutes from the gym, which can be strategically placed with a little bit of ingenuity to create shade.

I know educators who are allergic to sand in the same way that they are allergic to playdough. Ha! I know who you are! But, in this year of uncertainty, let’s allow our students to enjoy the serenity, sensory pleasures and myriad possibilities of outdoor sand play.

I promise you, it will buy you hours of calm, hands-on learning. If you build it, they will come. Just do it!

“Vera, Vera!  Come see how bright the colors are in my rainbow!” Four-year-old Owen is ecstatic about his discovery of a colorful collection of wet chalk after a summer shower in our outdoor classroom. This happy accident has paved the way for a sensory adventure as we meet our math and science early learning standards through play.

Owen is our engineer of playful learning. “This chalk feels different and it is so smooth to write on the sidewalk. Hurry, Vera!”

Owen is our full-of-life friend who loves to explore and discover and test out new ideas. He will extend the play until it’s time to leave or his stomach begins to rumble with hunger. He is also great at retaining the lessons he has learned for future exploration and discovery. Owen is our poster child for scientific investigation and math foundation!

“Owen, you can blend all of the colors! Do it with your feet!” Vera shouts back.

Vera is Owen’s partner in crime. There is nothing that beats the joy of childhood summers and outdoor learning. We don’t need worksheets to meet our early learning standards. We just need time to investigate, explore and experiment with a little bit of water, a bucket of chalk and our favorite friends. Water turns sidewalk chalk into an entirely different medium—transforming a dry and dusty classroom staple into a creamy and vibrant tool of creative expression. Trust me: Wet chalk will open up new avenues of imagination, exploration and learning in the preschool brain!

“Parker! Can you draw a person using shapes?” asks Avery, prompting her creative collaborator to tackle a new challenge. Here come our math standards, sneaking their way back into our play. Math vocabulary is exploding in our outdoor classroom. We are suddenly discussing lines and patterns and shapes and sizes. Blending is a form of addition, grouping, sets and prediction.

“I think the chalk will dry lighter,” Owen predicts as Vera nods in agreement.

“Why?” asks three-year-old Avery.

“Because the color of the dry chalk in the basket is lighter than the wet chalk on the sidewalk,” Owen answers. “Let’s try it!”

At Owen’s prompting, the children run off to conduct their latest experiment.

Ah, yes. The wet chalk has presented us with a priceless teaching-and-learning moment initiated and carried out by the children in our program. We have science as we observe, ask questions, problem-solve and draw conclusions. We have cause and effect, data analysis and design as the group tests out its theory. The mathematical and scientific inquiry has begun—and a whole new chapter of learning has become our curriculum for the day. This is why early childhood educators create their lesson plans at the end of the day—to build on the day’s explorations and extend them into the following day’s lessons. This is child-led learning!

Today, we have chalk investigative play happening. Our children discuss textures and exchange observations as they collaborate on their art in progress. Through their play with wet chalk, the children are describing and comparing physical properties. They are exploring concepts of force and motion as they draw with different amounts of pressure or drop dry pieces of chalk onto the sidewalk to create chalk bombs that explode on impact.

We spend a lot of time discussing math and science early learning standards here. But our day of chalk play also played an important role in preparing the children in our program for a successful transition to kindergarten.

Following are a few insights into the hidden benefits of chalk play—insights that can be shared with parents who may question the value of outdoor play and its role in advancing their children’s kindergarten readiness:

Kindergarten, sadly,  involves a lot of sitting time. Children need strength throughout their bodies—including strong core muscles to sit all day. When children get down on their hands and knees and support their upper-body weight with their arms and hands, this strengthens their core muscles, as well as their shoulder muscles, which are so important for fine-motor dexterity. Small pieces of chalk promote the development of the tripod grasp needed for pencil gripping. Drawing big chalk rainbow arches requires children to cross the midline. Why is this so important? Kindergarteners need midline-crossing skills so that the dominant hand can efficiently move from left to right across the page.

These are all bonuses for kindergarten readiness—above and beyond the early learning standards. This is the foundation that we talk about when we play our way into academic life. These small steps will enable our children to succeed when it’s time to sit at a desk.

“My chalk is shrinking really fast!” giggles Rowan.

Oh, how I love shrinking chalk! Yes, we are definitely collecting data, making observations and noticing cause and effect. But there’s more happening here than meets the eye. We know that the transition to smaller writing utensils helps promote the development of better gripping skills. As the children continue to draw and their pieces of sidewalk chalk get shorter and smaller, they are effectively transitioning to smaller writing tools and strengthening their gripping skills. We try not to rush writing in our young learners. But when it happens spontaneously, we try to promote the use of smaller pieces of chalk, crayons or pencils to help them develop age-appropriate gripping skills.

You never know where play will lead your little learners. But trust that there will be learning happening as the children share insights and ideas while building strong and trusting friendships. So let the children play in their outdoor classroom—and join in the “alfresco fun” as you meet your early learning standards!

“Look! The people blocks are in a line and they crash at the bottom,  just like when we play on the slide!”

This is a lightbulb moment as Evelyn transfers knowledge gleaned from a previous play experience into her current hands-on learning. A chain-reaction domino fall during today’s block play reminds Evelyn of waiting in line, forming a chain with her friends and banging into her friends at the bottom of the slide.

Learning is not learning unless it is applied to something real. This is the key to unlocking an understanding of math, science and reading skills.

Evelyn is beginning to “see” and retain her play epiphanies, building a rich experiential foundation that will help her make the most of her learning adventures today and in the years to come.

Soon, more young explorers join Evelyn at the table and our outdoor classroom grows quiet as the children engage in their own investigations with their favorite, people-shaped blocks.

We love blocks for so many reasons, but mainly because block play naturally adapts to the developmental level of the child. This is a great time to document the different math and science standards that our early learners are meeting. It’s also a good time to observe the mentoring and scaffolding that takes place as our young friends take their skills to the next level.

Our morning of block play turns out to be a great opportunity for the children to hone their fine-motor and problem-solving skills while developing traits such as patience and determination.

Because the blocks (or dominoes) do not have to be evenly spaced to set up a chain reaction, this is an activity that even our two-year-olds can master.

“Ugh, I am so frustrated!” declares Noah with a laugh. The children use the word “frustrated” many, many times during the activity because they enjoy mastering a new word (and because every other child at the table is using it), rather than as a true expression of frustration.

This is play! It is also a wonderful opportunity to share math and science vocabulary words such as force, push, speed, predict, hypothesis, distance, length and probability. I toss these words out like seeds to be planted for future understanding. Some of the children grasp these vocabulary words immediately and incorporate them into a new lexicon that reflects their growing understanding of mathematical and scientific principles.

“Hey! You are in my way!” shouts Eve as her line of block people intersects with Sally’s. I watch as Sally takes notice with an air of quiet concentration. “I know! Let’s make a square!” Eve shouts again before Sally can problem-solve her way out of the temporary crisis. Suddenly, we have collaboration and a new plan. We are creating shapes and timing our push-offs to coincide with those of our friends. We have teamwork and data analysis to see if the plan will work, where the blocks will meet and who will “win”!

Our morning of block people play takes off in many directions. They are counting and creating lines and curves and talking about direction and using words like far, near, behind, in front of and flat. This is geometry! They are also using words like never, impossible, probably and always—the language of data analysis and probability.

Jamie is quietly working on a whole new investigation. He has moved on to stacking, which takes a bit more patience and determination, and he really is getting frustrated! He has a plan and he knows what he wants to do, but the slightest movement on the table sends his circus act crashing down.

Jamie is our busy, rambunctious, always thinking, always moving friend. When he slows down enough to work on a project like this stacking challenge, he gives it the same 100% effort that he gives to nearly every activity in his day.

When we give children the materials and the time to explore and play, we can relax and remember that this is learning. This approach helps form the successful students and problem-solvers of the future!