Below you’ll find an extensive collection of outdoor games (many based on traditional formats) that are active, sociable, and hopefully, fun. They’ve been designed to help increase youngsters’ understanding and appreciation of the Northeastern Forest bioregion: its creatures and vital processes.
Many of these games feature cooperative and competitive elements combined within physical / athletic challenges. Some offer opportunities for singing, acting, and imaginative collaborative play. Often they include (or are supplemented by) visuals whose style springs from attentiveness to the natural world’s beauty. Above all, the activities are arts-infused, science-based, sociable, and physically lively. They strive to engage and enrich children’s verbal world-maps even as they promote their emotional connections to one another, and all the varied beings that comprise the precious Biosphere to which we all belong.
The activities consciously aim to provide young people with opportunities for exercising personal agency and for enjoying the learning community of their peers, teachers, and families. The games offer potential models for passing along ecological truths – models which can be adapted and improved by other educators. It is hoped that playful learning of this kind will be valuable to children and help prepared them for navigating the responsibilities, opportunities, and creative potential of their lives even in a time of climate crisis, social instability, and threatened biodiversity .
Also included here are correlations with the Next Generation Science Standards, and many suggestions for ways that these activities and projects can be expanded. Additionally, there are a few sections exploring the pedagogical, philosophical, and evolutionary rationale for this kind of learning.
The title of the manuscript draft is Circling the Sun, Racing the Wind. It was transformed into its current book and online pdf format by the remarkably gifted Lisa Greenleaf of Greenleaf Design Studio, and is scheduled for publication by Green Writers Press in April of 2024. https://greenwriterspress.com/book/circling-the-sun-racing-the-wind/ (Apologies for the change of date!)
To view the draft, just click below:
Circling-the-Sun-Racing-the-Wind_1.5