Community Outdoor School
Lesley Romanoff Lesley Romanoff

Community Outdoor School

Outdoor schools and nature schools — those perceptions are also shaped by stakeholders, advocates, the media, books, and organizations to be quite specific. Look up nature schools and you will see children following trails, in meadows, under a tree canopy, walking in streams in public or private land. The landscapes are large and wide. You will also learn of the benefits offered by outdoor schools.

This is not us.

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Maybe They Forgot Their Bag
Lesley Romanoff Lesley Romanoff

Maybe They Forgot Their Bag

Listen and learn. “Maybe they forgot their bag,” a child observes in answer to finding yet another pile of dog poop on the lawn where we are playing. This willingness to see a global kindness in others is something often gets lost as we grow older. So now we just bring bags with us to help where we can.

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Patches of Blue
Lesley Romanoff Lesley Romanoff

Patches of Blue

Each day and every class session, all of us, children and adults, look up at the sky, studying each corner. The children have developed a shared language of SKY.

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Grandmother Magic
Lesley Romanoff Lesley Romanoff

Grandmother Magic

As many early childhood programs across Maryland moved outdoors and our own program moved fully outdoors, we all soon discovered that there actually is such thing as bad weather. The answer, of course, is planning and figuring out how we begin our day in response to ANY kind of weather. In this case, we have something we call “grandmother magic” in crochet blankets and Teresa, our Seeds class teacher, a good bit of Tia magic.

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