AdAgrA 2019: True Success

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Intensive: Outdoor Education

Angela Boothby Frauenfelder

Outdoor Education - Part 1

Dear Lord, I praise you so much for this day.

I thank you for everyone that you have brought here.

And Lord, I just ask that you inspire them and that you encourage them.

And Lord, that you fill them with what they need to be filled with.

Because Lord, we long to be filled with you and we long to be filled with the knowledge that you long to instill in us.

Lord, may your spirit be here in your name, amen.

So today, what I'm talking about is how to get your kids just to fall in love with nature and fall in love with the Lord, because I think in the world that we live in, It doesn't matter what circle I've run, but everybody is on these, no matter if I'm around homeschooling people or if I'm around conference people or self-supporting people, Christians, non-Christians, they're just, everyone's on these.

And for the longest time, I said I was never gonna get 1 of these.

In fact, I just got 1 a year ago and I fought it really hard because I said I refuse.

And it was so cool because people would see me with my dumb phone and they'd be like, why do you have 1 of those?

And I could have this awesome witnessing conversation because I was in airports or trains or traveling and they'd never seen me with 1 of these.

But then after I became a girls dean, I was like, man, I need to figure out how to link my children with their parents.

So I would take pictures of my children and then send them to their parents, like, oh, that's what your child did today.

That way when they call home, parents have something to say, oh, I heard you did this compared to what you do at school.

I don't know, because you know, it's a boarding academy.

And let me tell you, abstinence does not teach you self-control.

I had these rules like, will not show smartphone in public.

Like I had released like list of crazy rules about how it was going to be like really different with my smartphone.

I'm just like everybody else, much to my great dismay.

All right, so for this first session, many of us hear that nature is really good for us.

Many of us have heard, you know, and Ellen writes in biblical writings that it's really good, but I don't know if you know, but there's also a lot of science out there.

So before I talk about a lot of ideas, I want to back you up so when you have conversations, you're not just saying, yeah, I know it's good.

So, if you're into reading, Richard Louv wrote these 2 books, I don't know if you've ever heard of them, but it's called The Nature Principle and The Last Child in the Woods.

They cover the business world, the importance of how business people need time in nature.

They cover the medical world, how people who look at nature scenes heal quicker, heal faster, when they look at something more nature-based than if they just look at a brick wall.

So these books are really awesome, really inspiring.

I've got a lot of my information from his research.

And then he also wrote a new 1 called Vitamin N, and that just has ideas, tons of ideas to figure out how to take your students and your children outside.

So, excellent author, but he describes the human cost of alienation from nature, among them diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses.

This disorder can be detected in individuals, families, and communities.

And he calls this the nature deficit disorder.

So you can start asking your kids, have you had your vitamin C?

By weighing the consequences of the disorder, we can also become more aware of how blessed our children can be biologically, cognitively, and spiritually through positive physical connection with nature.

So I really want to focus on the fact that you know a lot of times you hear all this is what's happening our children have such a more difficult time to be raised in and it's really discouraging and Overwhelming the different things that our kids have to combat But what I want you to see is how much rewards There are and like wherever it Satan creates a counteract the Lord creates something to help you to get through that right and so whatever Your kids are facing nature can give you many answers through God's creation.

That's what's so incredible So in 1987 to 2003 is really when there was a big decline of 50% of the proportion of children 9 to 12 who spent time outside in activities such as hiking, walking, fishing, beach play, and gardening.

So we really started to move from a more like an agrarian society to definitely in our houses.

I mean, if you think about it these days, how can parents come up with actual chores for their kids to do if they live on this little half acre plot?

What can you come up with for your kids to do?

And so it's very difficult for many parents and in many areas to be able to be like, yeah, let me have my children have nature time, or let me help them have chore time, or let me help them get off this.

Like, let's be honest, if you live in this tiny little area, what can they do but get on these things?

So the studies show that children's free play and discretionary time at typical week declined a total of 9 hours over a 25-year period.

So this is what our kids around the world, not around the world, but definitely in America are facing.

So there's this really awesome term that I love.

If you think about it, our kids spend more time controlled than ever before, right?

Watch at airports or watch walking around in a park.

Kids have those little things tied around their waist and the parents have the little leash, right?

And I'm not knocking any of it, it's just they're containerized.

There's even baby play mats that they look up and you can put the iPod there.

I mean, it's just everywhere, it's like, let me not have to figure out how to entertain my child.

Let me just let this entertain my child, right?

They did a study on toddlers and they show that they're physically active for about 20 minutes a day So, I mean that that that was in Scotland by the way They put West wristbands on 78 toddlers and they found out that these toddlers were 20 minutes active a day.

And as you can see, there's a problem, because we're just like, kids are high maintenance, let's just put them in a stroller and have them, you know, see the world that way.

And not even, like the strollers now, they come over and there's the iPad thing right there.

It's not even like, you know, in a stroller, you used to watch the world around you and the child would be excited just to observe and watch.

No, let's put something down there to entertain them.

You know, there's this funny thing called looking out your window, right?

And there's going to be a time, I'm afraid, where your child's going to ask, so mom, what did you do when you were in the car?

No because we can just buy backseat television monitors.

Why do so many people no longer consider the physical world worth watching?

The highways edges may not be postcard perfect.

Children's early understanding of how cities and nature fit together was gained from the back seat, the empty farmhouse at the edge of the subdivision, the variety of architecture here and there, The woods and fields and water beyond the seamy edges, all that is still available to the eye.

This was the landscape that we watched as children.

There is a real world beyond the glass for children who look, for those whose parents encourage them to truly see.

Who gains by your child watching out the window?

You know, not some businessman is going to make big money.

Outdoor Education - Part 2

Lord, I ask that you work in the plan of multiplication.

And so I just ask, Lord, that as we work in the plan of addition, you work in the plan of multiplication, and that, Lord, You just accomplish what you want to accomplish in these hearts.

So the first thing you need to do when you are doing outdoor education is to establish an outdoor classroom.

Because the outdoors can be scary because it's too much, too many things to distract and too many things, that's why teachers are like, no, I don't want to take them outdoors, I can't, where do I begin?

Well, just like you have in a classroom in your home, probably like this is your homeschooling spot, maybe it's just the dining room table, but you still have a spot that you go to.

Just like when you think about you have that time, they encourage you for devotional time, to have that spot you go to.

You need to have that spot you go to in nature.

That doesn't mean that you don't branch away from your tree, but they still get that feeling of a classroom outside.

It can be a bunch of logs that you set up into a circle, you know, and you have your husband or you yourself cut down the stump, right, and then you just section off and stack your little logs and make a cute little circle.

You can get as fancy as building a gazebo.

I have an awesome friend who teaches third and fourth graders and she has a teepee.

It's not impossible to build a teepee and it's not extremely expensive to build a teepee either.

What's cool about outdoor education is they get to facilitate their own learning.

So talk to them and say, what can be your classroom?

Are we going to build a wilderness survival shelter?

And that's what we're going to have school in.

And then after you do that, then you can use all of God's nature for your classroom, but you still have that idea and that box of I go back here for school.

Alright, so with science, Science is definitely 1 of the easiest ones to do outdoors.

It's really easy to do for kindergarten, first and second.

It's really easy to do honestly all the way up through eighth grade.

Once you hit high school, you have to accept that it's separate subjects and that's okay.

That just means certain subjects you can take outside and certain subjects like history, Lord I don't know why I'm teaching history, you need to keep indoors okay and that's okay.

But the K through 8 try to do thematic units.

So what I do is I love to do a year plan.

I love to sit down and look at my curriculum and do a year plan.

And so I divide everything by 9 weeks because that's how we work in conference schools with 9 week systems.

And I base it on my science curriculum because that to me is the easiest to include with outdoors, and then I can base it on the seasons that I'm in.

And then I align my reading program with those are the kind of books we read.

And my history, my social studies, doesn't always quite fit, but for example, communities.

You know, if we're talking about earth science, you know, it's a little bit easier to go out and about for field trips if I'm talking about communities.

So I also think, okay, with social studies, I think, all right, this is what the weather's gonna be like in Michigan, this is what I could take them outdoors to do, all right?

Usually there's life science and earth science and physical science and human body.

And so usually that's how I then start and I arrange everything, even my Bible stories, and I play around with all the other curriculum to line up with those 4 things, if that makes sense.

Because simply, science lends itself just naturally to the outdoors.

Super easy to do science outdoors with almost any lesson in science.

So some really cool things that you should think about at your home, depending on where you are, is building some different things to make options for other learning environments.

So such things as you want to create little mini ecosystems to help your kids observe.

There's incredible bird, I have to remember where I put stuff on this, looking at a computer is way harder than looking.

Okay, yeah, so on page 4, there's Build a Birdhouse, and there's a lot of different, really cool things online where you can follow what other birders are doing and see observations, and you can join bird clubs, all these different kind of things.

I have to remember where I put that website.

If I didn't put it on there, I will send it to you.

Just make sure you guys give me your emails, because I have more stuff to share with you than just these 3 printouts.

But I don't want to print out tons of stuff, to be honest, because I'm a go-green kind of girl, and a lot of times people get lots of handouts and then they just end up in the trash.

And so I'm happy to forward you all sorts of cool ideas.

Another thing that you should think about starting is a bat house.

I don't know if you know that with the white-nose syndrome.

And there's a really incredible bat program going on right now where it's very scientific-based, where you have different charts they're making, and so you can throw your more advanced math in there quite easily because you're doing stuff.

And I don't know why I'm not finding my bat idea on here.

I think it's, I really thought that I had the bat 1 on the science 1.

The thing is, I've presented this a couple times in different ways, and so sometimes I get confused about which 1 that I've presented where.

So the bat ones is a really awesome idea.

It means you're getting it in another way, but it is coming because you will get all my resources.

So I'll just talk and you can, I don't really, I'm not gonna really necessarily just go through this page by page because I don't really think that's as helpful?

So I'm just gonna give you lots of ideas and then you can keep using this for other ideas if that makes sense.

So bats houses, bat houses are really awesome to build.

They're pretty simple, but then you get that math because they have to measure and cut and nail and do all sorts of cool things.

And then There's this whole big database that has you do different bat projects to observe what kind of bats are coming, how many bats are coming, and you're actually helping science.

You're helping current science because the organization wants to know how our bats are doing in the world, and in the US in specific, okay?

So that's a really awesome thing to be a part of.

Another thing that I think is a really cool thing to do is to transform your schoolyard or home yard into a butterfly rest stop.

Help restore butterfly migration routes by planting seeds of indigenous pollinating plants to provide nectar, roosting, and food for caterpillars.

Hollyhocks, for example, are host plants for the Painted Lady butterfly, lupine for the Karner Blue butterfly, and milkweed, 4, and honeysuckle for monarchs and other pollinators.

And I don't have to read that all for you, but the really cool thing you'll see about outdoor education is it requires research, which is a great skill, and it helps then cross all the curriculums.

And I don't know about if you get this push as a homeschooling parent, but as a regular teacher they're always trying to tell you, not a regular, I'm sorry, as a classroom school teacher they're always trying to tell you make sure you cross the curriculum, make sure that you use multiple subjects at 1 time.

Well that's the cool thing about outdoor education is that it just mandates it.

Like, there's no way that I can figure out how to design a butterfly garden without having to do some research, without then having to do some writing, without having to do some statistics, without having to do a little bit of, like, figuring out, is this plant gonna work, is this plant?

In my area, in my neck of the woods, what butterflies am I trying to attract?

What kind of birds will I reach out to with birdhouses?

So for me, When I did my master's, I had a huge paradigm shift in the way that I was thinking, because I always heard that God is in nature and that you need to connect with God in nature.

But when I did, I kind of mentioned this before, when I did my master's, I realized that literally, the earth was given to me as a gift and it is my job as his creation to take care of it and to preserve it.

And so in what ways are you encouraging your children to take care of it and preserve it in your own backyard?

Outdoor Education - Part 3

Dear Lord, I thank you so much once again Lord that we have the ability to pause Lord this this time is going really really fast and I feel like I Am not accomplished everything that you want me to accomplish I just ask Lord that you slow me down and help to order my thoughts so that way, Lord, that these parents can feel empowered and have the tools they need to be the educators that you've called them to be.

And we thank you and praise you so much for our children.

And I'm just going to cover a couple of ideas.

But I wanted to go back to 1 more idea for a science idea.

1 thing that I did with a sit spot is I let the kids take yarn and they yarned out a square and I kept it kind of small because the idea is for them not necessarily to play but to observe.

Teaching our children to observe is huge, It's super important to teach them how to observe instead of always having to be doing things.

They don't always need to be using their hands.

They don't always...they can learn to just sit and watch the world around them.

And so you need to decide how big the square needs to be because it really depends on what's available to you in your terrain and what your landscape looks like.

But what's really cool about that sit spot is they can watch it change through the seasons.

They can watch what wildlife comes through certain parts of the seasons.

They can experience green buds on a tree.

It can be a different than the other sit spot if you want, but this kind of sit spot, it just helps them to watch the seasons come and go and whatever happens.

Another really cool idea is, last thing for science, is a micro-hike, which means that you don't go very far, but you use your magnifying glass and you realize there's literally a whole world and a little foot-by-foot space.

There's a whole lot of life down there that we know very little about.

A foot-by-foot, like I just start out very small for a micro-hike because otherwise they get bored really quick and they're like, oh there must be something somewhere else.

And teaching them, teaching them I think to stop is a huge life lesson.

It's very necessary to be a very positive citizen in our environment.

It's just to stop, reflect before I just spew out an answer.

I think there's just so many life lessons and character building that you're doing for them by teaching them to stop.

The students need to get into groups and take 12 large and 12 small sticks.

The challenge is to make a shape or picture that contains the most shapes possible.

So this is a big upper grader level challenge and this is a lower grade level challenge.

On the chalkboard create a chart of math concepts.

Using chalk the groups have to identify through colors and codes the different attributes.

Example circle and red all the right angles.

This is a great way to reinforce math concepts.

You can take it a step further where you have your older graders doing surface area, parameter volume.

So, instead of just looking at that wonderful textbook which says you know find the surface area of the cylinder.

Now whatever giant shape they constructed inside is going to be all sorts of shapes and what's really cool is they're going to be really difficult shapes that don't follow the perfect rules, but we know we have the ability and the formulas to solve these.

So this is where with math you have to, it's a lot more difficult because the way our math curriculum is set up is very much like you need these steps to accomplish this and you need these steps.

And so if you're not a mathematician it can be very daunting to look at a math book and be like, oh yeah, I can step away from my math book and they'll be successful in math, especially as an upper grader.

So what I encourage people to do is do 1 creative, if you're teaching upper graders, because I think it's more worth it to stick to the math book as an upper grader than to have them not be able to follow the sequential steps because it's essential if they want to be, you don't want them to be like, I can't do math, so I'm not gonna become an engineer.

And so as a little kid teacher, I think it's okay to step away from the math book and you'll still get their general concepts, but as an older 1, if you're not sure you can do it, use the math book.

Because I've seen that where people are like, I just can't do math.

And then they really have a creative engineering kind of mind, but the fact that it's a bunch of math classes in college, they're like, I can't do it, I won't do it.

I mean, don't be so scared of your books that you'd completely just drop them.

And all you could do is simply do practical math once a week.

And you still have them use their book and they sit at their desk and do the next lesson.

But once a week you take math outdoors and you find the height of a tree.

And because you can do this shape thing multiple ways because there's a lot of work to do with those 12 sticks that they could make all sorts of shapes and maybe you're just going to do parameters and then you're going to do surface areas.

You know you could do a building project for a math project but just try to do practical math for your upper graders once a week instead of feeling the need for every math lesson to take it outdoors.

Because that in the end it might cheat your student more than help them.

But anytime that you could just make it practical and useful, then I think that's when they'll be like, oh wait mom, I could do this math lesson outdoors.

Because you might not even understand it completely the way they're understanding it.

They're the ones working through the book.

You're just trying to teach them through the book, right?

So they might even come up with ideas and even challenge them.

Like, hey, if you think you can take this math lesson outside, how could you take this concept and use it outside?

I won't have you do lessons 1 or numbers 1 through problems 1 through 30 if you can show me this main concept you can do outside.

They won't, you know, and occasionally you throw that in there, but they do.

Math is not scattered, math is building blocks.

And so it is super important that you do follow it sequentially because math is that 1 thing that does really build on itself.

And if you don't get the concept, you won't get the next concept and then you just get scared of math.

A parent is saying for the recording sake the fact that when they were working on a certain math concept they just weren't understanding it and so they just put it aside for a while and they came back to a couple months later and he got it.

And so it's probably yeah figuring out how to stop a concept is fine.

So movement when you're learning math facts is huge.

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Intensive: Outdoor Education

Outdoor Education - Part 2

Transcript

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