Math in the Great Outdoors

Over the years, many people have asked me about how I “handle” math in outdoor environments. I leave the formal part of that work to the families, who are concurrently enrolled in independent studies or homeschooling so that they can do what makes the most sense for their child and their own family’s needs. My work with Outside School is developmentally derived, and math comes up as an organic part of our daily, informal studies. Here are a few examples of math:

Calendars/A Multitude of Lessons

Relationships are everything! My friends at East Brother Light Station offered to sound the old foghorn for us, as we can hear it from where we have class in Wildcat Canyon. I thought it would be neat to hear it for the kids’ birthdays, but also knew the innkeepers were concerned about the foghorn’s age. So, I proposed to my students that we figure out one day that we could celebrate all their birthdays together with one foghorn blast. They figured out there were 40 days between their first and last birthdates, so the date should be 20 days in between. That happened to fall on a school day, which is also the lighthouse keepers’ day off, and they were all in on the idea!

Adding on to this will be that we can work with the island: 

-What time did the foghorn sound off, exactly?

-What time did we hear it, exactly?

-Does that relate to topography or local weather conditions such as humidity, cloud cover, wind direction, and temperature?

-Can we include other local children so we can compare data points?

-What goes into caring for an antique foghorn?

I brought a beautiful calendar that I got for 2022, celebrating Barnali Ghosh’s (@berkelywali) fanciful interpretations of California wildflowers. One particular child who does not normally like to write got a kick out of having me look up 2022 holidays on my phone while he wrote them all in on the calendar (“Partee New Years Day”). This was meaningful for them because they wanted to know dates for the rest of the school year, its holidays and when school would be over. They wrote in some important dates for me, too: NASCAR weekend when I’ll be back working with my Fire/Safety crew and my husband’s and my birthdays. They added on their parents’ birthdays, too, along with the major Jewish holidays. I added in the major Muslim holidays and we shared stories about parts of them we know about.

Camera/Budget

I bring a camera for documentation, and the children also love to use it themselves. When the school year first started, I’d get home and discover there were too many badly made movies that made me nauseous to view and hundreds of photos it took me hours to wade through. This was not fun, and too time consuming! I chatted with the students and we came up with a plan for setting a camera budget: Each person (children and myself alike) could have 35 photos per day and up to two minutes of video. That causes us to be mindful of what we photograph, and ensure we’ve deleted what we don’t want before the end of the school day. For movie-making, the children have figured out how to use the camera’s built-in editing systems. Sometimes our work is too fabulous to cut, so we will ask each other if they’ll “lend” us part of their budget for photos or filmmaking. It’s been fantastic and fun, to say the least, and I get a kick out of what they make!

You can watch some of the videos the children have shot here, at “School Time!- Filmed by Students”:

One kid figured out how to make movies in multiple speeds and said, “We have to record this for six minutes in order for it to be 27 seconds.” This child is a particularly hilarious movie director, and has a special way of involving everyone in their plans.

We also learned that we have to budget the camera battery, as we’ll run out if we forget to turn it off, just take videos instead of mixing it up with photos, or simply spend too much time using the device instead of simply playing around. I recharge it each night when I upload.

You can learn more about my documentation methods in my article, “From Fear to Freedom: Risk and Learning in a Forest School.”

Watch/Timekeeping

The children kept asking what time it was, so I brought an analog watch that I attach to my backpack for their access. If the time changes or if the date is wrong, the children are in charge of fixing it. The one whose age is in the middle is teaching the younger and older ones how to tell time!

Lesson plan by Heather Taylor, teachoutside@gmail.com. You are welcome to share all materials with credit to her.