Find a spot to lay outside and have children practice the 5-4-3-2-1 Strategy

5: things you can see

4: things you can hear

3: things you can feel

2: things you can smell

1: thing you can taste

Walking can be one of the most powerful ways to regulate due to the natural rhythm it creates with each step. Have students listen to the sounds around them while you walk as a class

Gratitude Walk Practice

Find a grassy outdoor area where you can comfortably sit or lie barefoot for at least 15 minutes. Remove your shoes and spend time consciously feeling the connection between your body and the earth. This would be a great time to practice a meditation technique with students, too!

Draw a series of circles in the playground and label each of them with a different sound. Shout out a word and ask the pupil to throw a bean bag (or something else you can throw) into the circle that represents the sound that word begins or ends with.

Word-based hopscotch. Use chalk to map out a course using words from the same family, e.g. mat, sat, cat, bat etc. Ask pupils hop across the course, they read aloud each word.

Take story writing outside. Give the class a story prompt related to nature and sit outside to write it. The world around them should provide plenty of inspiration for stories to tell. 

A new season is a great opportunity to learn new vocabulary. Print out a vocab list and go outside to check off any vocab words students can see or hear.

Head outside and read. The great outdoors can open up the reading opportunities for children, enhancing their experience in a multi-sensory environment. Create a dedicated space for it. 

Create a nature journal for each pupil. Have them take notes, make drawings or paintings or stick in things they’ve found in nature. Use these to inflame their love of the outdoors. 

Have a class scavenger hunt where students are challenged to collect a certain number of outdoor items. Then use them for multiplication, number bonds or 100 square activities. 

Make a human clock. Use sticks, chalk or stones to make the outside of a clock. Then ask your class to get in lay down, before stretching their arms and legs to resemble a time of the day. 

Practice things like number and place value using things found outdoors. Collect a bundle of 10 sticks to represent a whole, and see how 1 can represent a tenth of that.

Create a quick and easy parachute, learning all about gravity and air resistance on the way. Use different materials, like cloth, plastic or paper, and see which can float the longest.

Plant your own class garden. Plant some seeds and learn what it takes for a seed to blossom into a flower. Tie in some science learning about the growth of plants and the lifecycle.

Study the sun, it’s relation to Earth and how that affects light with a human sundial experiment. Come back every day at a different time and draw the shadow a child projects in the playground.