Outdoor Learning Bins with Sinead Joy and Erin Reid

Teach Outdoors

The start of the year is the perfect time to have this collaborative discussion. How to create outdoor learning bins? How do they support both structured lessons and emergent learning at the same time? What could we include in the bins?
Sinead Joy and Erin Reid are with us today to talk about their experiences in creating and using outdoor learning bins with a mathematical focus. Their school, with the help of funding from Coquitlam District's Numeracy Initiative Project, created 6 outdoor learning bins.
1) Measurement: cloth measuring tapes
2) Number Senses: addition and subtraction focus. Tarps with dots and number values. (e.g., students could throw a bean bag or pinecone and add or subtract that number from their original number).
3) Patterns: included Andy Goldsworthy books and other pictures of nature patterns
4) Financial Literacy: a bin for pricing out the cost for a school garden and also included seed catalogues
5) Visual/Spatial Reasoning and Coding: compass and arrows
6) Number Sense/ Number Lines: twine, clothes pegs and various numbers.
Also included in their teacher wagon: binoculars, clipboards, waterproof pens, large plastic Venn diagram hoops for sorting activities.