Sticks, Leaves, and Touching Grass

After yesterday’s post you might be surprised to see this photo of students tackling a math problem.

Image from Glenwood Academy. Used with permission.

Take a closer look at the math problem.

They’re making “Stick Stew.”

Measuring, doubling, and halving ingredients for our 'Stick Stew'. Even basic recipes require math skills. Making recipes larger or smaller can take you even deeper into fractions, multiplication, and division! - - Glenwood Academy

As someone who had terrible experiences with math throughout my education, I thought, “Wow! That looks like fun!” 

As a career early childhood educator, I wondered, “But did they really get to go out and make ‘Stick Stew’ with real sticks?”

Glenwood Academy is described on the The Maryland Association of Nonpublic Special Education Facilities (MANSEF) website as follows:

GA embraces and empowers all students with language-based learning differences such as dysgraphia, dyscalculia, dyslexia, and language processing difficulties. Through an engaging, multi-sensory, developmental, language-intensive curriculum, we work towards helping all of our students to evolve and discover his or her individual potential for greatness.

What caught my eye, of course, was the engaging presentation of the math lesson. What sparked my imagination was the potential for a multi-sensory experience with sticks and leaves. I don’t know if this particular lesson culminated in a hands-on nature experience, but GA’s social media posts document a curriculum filled with “engaging, multi-sensory, developmental, language-intensive” learning experiences.

Around the same time that I was contemplating this photo, I came across a quote from Chiara D’Amore, founder and CEO of the Community Ecology Institute:

At heart, I am an experiential environmental educator. I love little more than getting folks out into nature and helping them learn about why and how we should care for the ecosystem of which we are a part and on which we ultimately depend. And the true joy it brings people, especially in an age in which we spend so much time inside on screens, is some of the best medicine.

D’Amore illustrates this statement with photographs taken while engaging with students in CEI programs.

Images: Chiara D’Amore, used with permission 

And here’s how CEI describes its overall program goals: 

We create innovative, meaningful experiential education programs for people across the lifespan.

Although the missions of these two institutions may be quite different, I couldn’t get the juxtaposition of the two experiences out of my head. Both use materials from the natural world as a jumping off point. 

Clearly the Glenwood Academy’s example is more symbolic, using the mental image of Stick Stew to enliven a lesson in recalculating amounts in a recipe. D’Amore’s heartfelt description of CEI’s experiential learning in nature speaks to the discovery learning experiences that I’ve always loved the most in teaching early childhood classes.

Both illustrate ways in which traditional classroom education isn’t the only way to learn deeply and effectively. And also, that hands-on experiential learning isn’t just for “the littles.” 

Yesterday a response from a reader reminded me of the challenges presented by non-traditional learning environments.

To make project-based and inquiry learning possible, we have to slash our class sizes.

It’s true. These experiences rely on smaller groups, more adult-to-student interaction and relationship-building. That’s expensive. We keep hearing that our school systems can’t afford that.

Nevertheless, I’m writing about this here because I’m convinced that we need to find ways to incorporate these kinds of experiences into our kids’ lives. Not solely to support educational goals, but also, as Dr. D’Amore says:

…the true joy it brings people, especially in an age in which we spend so much time inside on screens, is some of the best medicine.

What do you think?

Village Green/Town² Comments