Outdoor Hour Challenge. II.

We completed our second round with the Outdoor Hour Challenge.

The week before we headed outside to begin our journey and this week it wasn’t even the least bit difficult to convince the kids to don their boots and jackets and slip outside.

We are taking our hikes right after lunch so it’s a been a fabulous motivator to clear the table and tidy the kitchen in a hurry.

Our assignment was Challenge #2: Using Your Words.

And do you know what we didn’t do on our walk?

Use our words.

Get it?  

Oh, the irony.

The assignment was to be quiet, to listen, to observe.

We spent over twenty-five minutes outside.

Six of us.  Me, London, Mosely, Bergen, Piper and Otto.

And we hardly spoke a word.

Even Otto Fox.

Can you believe it?

The kids were completely engaged in climbing over dead limbs, sneaking up to the thicket to watch the birds and trying to pass through the leaves with less crunch.

When we returned from our walk, we gathered in the school room and followed the last of the challenge’s instructions.

We finally got to use our words.

Each child came up with one word describing something they heard, two words describing something they saw and three words describing something they felt.

And I did too.

In a time long long ago and in a land far far away when I was once upon a time a traditional teacher in a traditional classroom, I learned that it was very effective to complete assignments (as possible) with my students.  When I attempted to write a poem that I had just instructed them to write, we were all better served.  They saw me lead by example and I experienced first hand the challenges of creating words on demand.

And so the kids and I wrote words in our Nature Journals.

And then some of them added pictures and some added color and I love that there doesn’t  have to be a specific rule as to what that looks like.

I love that the author of The Handbook of Nature Study reminds me that art for art’s sake is beautiful.

“Too much have we emphasized drawing as an art; it may be an art, if the one who draws it is an artist; but if he is not an artist, he still has a right to draw if it pleases him to do so.  We might as well declare that a child should not speak unless he put his words into poetry, as to declare that he should not draw because his drawings are not artistic.”   (Anna Botsford Comstock)

And, as simple as that, the Outdoor Hour Challenge this week was completed.