Learning Outside with Outdoor School

Outdoors is where we want to be any time of the year, but especially in the spring. Now is the time to take advantage of the warming weather, animals waking up or migrating back, and plants blooming. Head outside and make the most of your natural environment!

I am super excited to announce that I am on the Influencer Team for Outdoor School. These are a series of awesome books focused on learning outside. Since outside is our happy place, we are going to take full advantage of the Outdoor School ideas and resources.

The Outdoor School series is generally divided into three categories; interactive nature guides, spot and sticker books, and small essential pocket guides.

The three Nature Guides, like this HIKING AND CAMPING Book, are thick books full of activity ideas, space for documenting your adventures and learning, challenges and more.

The spot & sticker books are sticker books with a huge number of stickers plus fold out pages to use some of the stickers to mark off the animals or plants you find. If your child loves stickers or scavenger hunts, then I highly recommend these books. Our favorite is this SPOT & STICKER PLANTS book.

The small pocket guides are waterproof and tearproof. Perfect for packing on your next hike or camping trip. This ANIMAL TRACKS guide has an impressive number of common animal tracks packed into this thin little guide.

Our Homeschool Outdoor School Plans for Spring

These arrived just in time for my Spring planning. Our science theme for the next few months is Geology so the OUTDOOR SCHOOL ROCK FOSSIL AND SHELL HUNTING guidebook is a perfect fit. We will also be doing a lot of hikes, visiting a National Park, going on a Spring camping trip and spending a lot of time just outside in our backyard. I’m excited to integrate these resources into our homeschool to deepen our learning outside.

Geology

I will share a full post about our Geology unit when we’re done, but rocks has been an ongoing interest all year. I shared a little about our geology interest and homeschooling in this post about our trip to a nearby rocky beach. I am excited to use Outdoor School Rock Fossil and Shell Hunting to learn more about rocks with my fourth graders.

Hiking

If you follow me on Instagram then you probably already know that we are huge hikers. We’ve hiked almost every weekend throughout the pandemic and mid-week whenever we can fit it in. This is a post about one of our favorite hikes in San Diego.

Occasionally I talk about how to hike with kids, not just where and giving them something to do while you hike is one of my essentials. The HIKING AND CAMPING outdoor school guide book or the ANIMAL WATCHING outdoor school guide book or any of the SPOT & STICKER books are perfect examples of this. I am planning to use a combination of these books this spring on not only our weekly hikes but on our bigger hikes on our upcoming National Park trip.

Nature in Our Backyard

We already spend a lot of time in our backyard. It’s become my oasis during the pandemic. We have a small garden growing, we do our SLOW DOWN meditations each week in the backyard, we take math outside with our WILD MATH CURRICULUM when we need a break from Beast Academy, and we have our Poetry Tea times on a blanket most Wednesdays. The OUTDOOR SCHOOL ANIMAL WATCHING book has some fun ideas for animal watching right in your own backyard that I can’t wait to try.

Spring Camping

Lastly, my kids love camping. We spent a week camping at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park and we’re planning to go back in late Spring. The OUTDOOR SCHOOL HIKING AND CAMPING guidebook will once again come in handy. My son loves survival skills and he’s already eyeing up the section on building a fire and cleaning water (even though fresh water is readily available at the State Park).

Part guide book, part journal, part activity book, the Outdoor School collection of guidebooks are perfect for kids who love nature. We can’t wait to increase the amount of time we spend outside.

If you want a quick way to get started, try the Re-Wild Your Life Challenge. Save this image and check off your progress. You could do this whenever it works for you, however the official REWILD YOUR LIFE CHALLENGE runs from April 4 – April 16, 2021. We will be sharing our adventures on Instagram at @erin.bambinitravel.com.