St Joseph’s is a beautiful primary school located in the quiet Camden Haven area, an idyllic setting that we cherish every day. We are a small, one stream school with around 140 students that range from classes in Kindergarten to Year 6. Being such a small school has ensured a close knit environment where each student is known and valued and we appreciate the culture that this has allowed us to develop. We are extremely lucky to have a school that is surrounded by natural bushland, as well as having large outdoor playing spaces, including a sensory garden, sandpit, soccer fields and cricket pitch.

Our students get the added benefit of shade from our many eucalyptus trees and it’s not uncommon to catch a glimpse of various species of wildlife some days. In addition to the spaces that students are free to use on a daily basis, we also have spaces that are special to our school, that students are able to visit with supervision from their teacher, such as the Indigenous totem garden and the church gardens next door.

The surrounding areas of our school are an added bonus, with Henry Kendall Reserve just a short walk away, the local sporting fields close by, which we utilise often, and a breathtaking backdrop of the North Brother mountain that we have the privilege to see from our playground.

All students that come to our school relish in our outdoor play spaces, as they are spacious and inviting. During lunchtimes, students have the option to play soccer or football on one of our fields, play cricket on the cricket pitch, engage in sensory or imaginative play in our outdoor sensory garden, test their abilities on one of the two adventure play equipment areas or engage in a game of basketball or netball on our courts. Students also have the option to attend an outdoor lunchtime club such as gardening club where students enjoy planting flowers, herbs and vegetables (and get to taste their hard work!) or skipping club.

During class time, it is normal to see students outside for their lessons, whether it be, collaboratively creating a news report in the natural setting of our playground, engaging in a game for Sport or PE, panning for “gold” in the sandpit for history, investigating through messy science experiments, or measuring outdoor spaces for Mathematics.

As well as the everyday outdoor experiences, we take the opportunity to use our outdoor spaces for special days, and in the past have enjoyed it by facilitating things such as Outdoor classroom day, Global School Play day, NAIDOC Day, various community building afternoons and nights, end of term water day, Year 6 fun days, tabloid sports afternoons and many more. It has always been embedded in our school culture to utilise our outdoor environment, and we look forward to continuing this into the future.

We have also valued outdoor learning as part of our school culture and believe that giving students the opportunity to be outdoors can improve their overall health and wellbeing. We are fortunate enough to have such an idyllic outdoor environment, and so we have seen what a positive impact outdoor learning can have on students engagement. We had our first Outdoor Classroom Day last year and we had such positive responses from the kids, in the way they engaged with the learning experiences and interacted with each other, and from teachers and parents, in regards to their participation, appreciation and enthusiasm, that we are looking forward to doing it again.

We began our Outdoor Classroom Day by having our whole school in concentric circles on the playground, surrounding a large mandala blanket. We began with an Acknowledgement of Country, where some of our Indigenous students played their didgeridoos and clap sticks.
We followed with a prayer where we acknowledged and gave thanks for the amazing aspects of the natural environment, whilst creating an outdoor prayer space containing various natural elements.

For the rest of the day, we engaged in a variety of rotations that spread across our outdoor playground. Students were put into groups of mixed ages and rotated around the different activities that included:
– QR code scavenger hunt
– Team building exercises
– obstacle courses
– Outdoor library
– Water Play
– Imaginative play in our sensory garden
– Outdoor craft
– Weaving with natural materials
– Paper plane flying competition
– Mini art installations using natural materials

We finished the day as a whole school, under the shade of our beautiful eucalyptus trees, and engaged in a whole school singing activity.  As a whole, students at our school are taken outside for learning many times throughout the school week. Our outdoor learning journey is just beginning and we look forward to the opportunities that we could engage in, in the future.

Through our participation in the Outdoor Classroom Day, we found that students were more engaged and positive about their learning. Their enthusiasm and attentiveness to the activity was heartwarming to see and we look forward to it again this year.  We will continue to engage our students in the outdoor environment, and we are always looking at more ways to incorporate this into our school.

The Outdoor Classroom Day Team would like to thank St Joseph’s Primary School Laurieton for sharing their story with us.  

WANT TO SHARE YOUR OUTDOOR CLASSROOM DAY STORY WITH THE WORLD?

If you’ve previously taken part in Outdoor Classroom Day, you’ve probably got some great stories to share – and we’d love to hear them!
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