Every spring and fall, volunteers from the Agricultural Stewardship Association offer outdoor learning experiences to Cambridge Elementary students at the Cambridge Community Forest on Rockside Drive.
These sessions offer students the opportunity to learn about nature and experience the beauty of the great outdoors. Students learn about a variety of things, including how seeds scatter in the wild as part of their life cycle studies. Students dug up socks they had filled and buried last fall with various man-made and natural items in order to study decomposition and they created structures and designs with branches and stones – all part of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) learning in nature.
There are several benefits to students learning in an outdoor classroom environment. Some of the benefits include:
- supporting children’s learning and development in all domains with the most frequent being creativity and imagination and social emotional development;
- increasing engagement in the outdoor classroom;
- implementing restorative aspects to children’s behavior when returning indoors;
- feeling an increased effectiveness in their work
Families are always welcome to hike and visit the sensory trail for children in the forest! Park in the parking lot at the end of Rockside Drive close to Route 313.
