Natural Items in the Environment
When trying to create a natural environment in your classroom, it is recommended to replace the bright colored items with more natural tones and real life items. We talk a lot about adding items to the house area that are real or replicas that aren't toy or plastic. It is also encouraged to add natural items from the children's environment into the classroom Not only will it make the classroom feel more "real" it will bring added local culture to the environment.
I recently visited a program that was located near water and marsh land. In their environment, they have several duck mounts featuring the variety of ducks that are native to the area. Another program had mounted squirrels on display and a large bee hive hanging from a branch. These are real life items that are naturally found in the children's environment which have been brought into the classroom to enhance the classroom.
The image above shows some beach stones that were picked up by some children on a family vacation and brought into the program to be shared. The teacher took fabric paint and put dots and numbers on the stones to create a nature based math activity. This same classroom took some other stones and wrote upper case and lower case letters on them for a nature based literacy activity.
Your art center can also have collage items available for the children. These could be such things as pine needles, leaves, flower petals, pine cones, small stones, pieces of bark and small sticks. You may be quite surprised by the creativity that children express using this media along with glue, clay or playdough, and writing or drawing equipment.
Above is an image of a tree branch that was added to the end of the art easel and is used as a place for the children to hang their art smocks. I've also seen a classroom that took a large tree branch with small leaves attached and hung it with strings from the ceiling over the reading area to create an "outdoor" quiet area. To enhance the area, you could add tree stumps as seats or small tables to place next to existing furniture.
Use your imagination, think outside the box, and find creative ways to bring the outdoor natural environment into your classroom. The children will enjoy interacting with the natural items and it will add a variety of textures to the classroom.
If you have additional ideas for adding natural items to the environment, I would love to hear about them and/or see pictures. Don't hesitate to share your ideas with us! We would love to share your creative ideas with others.
