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It was one of those beautiful days in the woods where you could just barely feel the season beginning to change. The bre...
08/26/2026

It was one of those beautiful days in the woods where you could just barely feel the season beginning to change.

The breeze had a little crispness to it today, and the kids noticed it too.

We started with our usual task boxes and morning meeting before moving into vocabulary binders and our Build It Vocabulary Cards. Then the kids headed straight into a new project: the fort.

They put an impressive amount of thought and teamwork into it. They spent all of their free time building, reinforcing, and figuring things out together. Even I couldn't help but join in and help.

Wild Math looked a little different today with our new Math Detective Challenge.

The kids moved through hands-on math challenges that included identifying and counting trees, building addition problems with materials they found around the outdoor classroom, estimating, comparing, and recording their results.

The goal was to get them moving while using math to investigate the space around them rather than sitting in one place working through problems.

Once the math challenge was finished, they were very ready to get back to their fort.

We wrapped up our afternoon with backyard recess before returning to the woods for hammock reading.

Vocabulary, math, building, exploring, reading, and a little hint of fall in the air. 🌳

We had a smaller crew at Mindfully Educated today while a few of our friends squeeze in their last summer trips and befo...
08/24/2026

We had a smaller crew at Mindfully Educated today while a few of our friends squeeze in their last summer trips and before everyone joins us for the school year!

We started with our usual task boxes and morning meeting, covering the weather, date, and rules of the woods. The kids also immediately noticed that our outdoor classroom perimeter had grown over the weekend, so there was plenty of excitement about having some new territory to explore.

Vocabulary included something new today: our Build It Vocabulary Cards.

I designed these over the weekend using words we have already worked on. Rather than continually introducing new vocabulary and leaving old words behind, the cards give the kids different ways to revisit them, work with their spelling and structure, check their understanding, explain meaning, and apply the words again. The idea is to keep building depth and familiarity with our vocabulary over time.

Naturally, once our lesson was finished, the kids found their own way to turn the cards into a game of charades.

Free play brought lots of exploring and planning throughout the newly expanded areas before we moved into Wild Math.

I normally set aside about 40 to 50 minutes for math.

Today, the kids turned it into 80 minutes entirely on their own.

Our planned challenge started with dice and blank hundreds charts. Each student rolled two dice at an appropriate skill level and used the resulting number to skip count across the chart, rolling a new number when they reached the beginning of each new row.

Once everyone completed the challenge, we grabbed the click counters and headed out to count steps around our newly expanded perimeter.

That was when their questions took over.

How many laps would it take to reach 1,000 steps, 2,000, 3,000?

What if we took really big steps?

What about tiny steps?

How quickly could we reach the next hundred?

So they kept walking.

And counting.

And sharing their totals every time they hit another milestone.

What was supposed to be one short math activity became another 30-plus minutes of completely voluntary counting, measuring, comparing, adding, and experimenting until several of them were well into the thousands.

Those are the kinds of moments I love most. The lesson was technically finished, but they weren't finished learning.

We wrapped up with lunch, bead crafts, and tag in the backyard playground followed by hammock reading in the woods before pickup.

Since we missed our watercolor nature study yesterday, we decided to do it this afternoon after our outdoor enrichment p...
08/19/2026

Since we missed our watercolor nature study yesterday, we decided to do it this afternoon after our outdoor enrichment program ended. Today was a rotting log watercolor activity.

Today started with our familiar task boxes and morning meeting, but our morning free time looked a little different than...
08/19/2026

Today started with our familiar task boxes and morning meeting, but our morning free time looked a little different than usual and ended up lasting almost twice as long.

One of our students came prepared to teach everyone how to make snakes out of pony beads, and the group was completely invested. There was lots of listening, helping, pattern making, and concentration as everyone created their own bead snake before we moved into vocabulary binder work. 🐍

Vocabulary was briefly interrupted by an unexpected discovery in the woods: a deceased chipmunk.

The kids handled it with so much respect. They decided he deserved a proper burial, chose a quiet spot in the woods, and used a rock that one of the kids had painted as his headstone. It was one of those unplanned moments that becomes its own kind of lesson.

Because our morning had run long, we took a shorter snack and reset break before moving into Wild Math.

I spent part of the weekend designing new task cards specifically for our small math groups, aligned with the curriculum and each group's current skill level. Today we worked on number sequences, skip counting, and comparing numbers before bringing out the dice, click counters, and Math Boxes.

With each roll, the kids kept a running total in two different ways: recording it on their click counters while also physically representing the numbers with objects from their Math Boxes. Lots of counting, adding, checking, and correcting along the way.

Recess brought freeze tag, more bead making, and lunch before we headed back into the woods.

Hammock reading was especially exciting today because our new "I Survived" books arrived, and the kids were ready to put them to use.

Our new beads arrived for Wednesday's post-hammock reading time activity!Who would have thought that 6-9 year olds would...
08/17/2026

Our new beads arrived for Wednesday's post-hammock reading time activity!

Who would have thought that 6-9 year olds would enjoy making bracelets so much?

Another full day of outdoor learning at the Mindfully Educated Outdoor Enrichment Program!We started with our morning ta...
08/17/2026

Another full day of outdoor learning at the Mindfully Educated Outdoor Enrichment Program!

We started with our morning task boxes and meeting before heading into free play while I prepared our vocabulary binders.

Today was a vocabulary review day, so we revisited all of the words we have learned during our first two weeks. The kids matched words to their definitions and then practiced building their own sentences with them.

Free play included fort building, chalk soup making, and helping bring in our new math group tables, handmade for us by one of our Bumblebee moms. 💜

Wild Math was all about building, adding, comparing, and estimating numbers.

We separated into skill groups and used dice to build and add numbers with ones, tens, and hundreds. Once everyone had their answers, we organized the numbers from least to greatest.

Then the click counters came out. With every roll of our 20-sided die, we “click stepped” that many times and kept a running total until we reached 153 steps.

Our final challenge was estimation. Everyone guessed how many steps it would take to walk from the entrance of our outdoor classroom all the way to Fern Valley at the opposite end of the driveway. Then we walked it, counted, and compared our actual total to the estimates.

One child guessed it exactly, down to the step!

After math, we headed to the backyard for recess, homemade chocolate strawberry muffins, and watermelon before returning to the woods for hammock reading, cleanup, and a few final minutes of free play before pickup.

Another day of finding our rhythm at the Mindfully Educated Outdoor Enrichment Program 🌿Today we raised the bar a little...
08/12/2026

Another day of finding our rhythm at the Mindfully Educated Outdoor Enrichment Program 🌿

Today we raised the bar a little during our morning task boxes, with everyone completing at least two before moving on to free play. We followed that with our usual morning meeting practice of date, time, temperature, and Fahrenheit-to-Celsius conversions.

One of my favorite things to notice today was how comfortable the kids are becoming with our routine. The newness is settling in, and the space is starting to feel like theirs.

They actually kicked off free time with a morning meeting of their own, assigning jobs and getting straight to work. Some chiseled away at an old log with tools found around the outdoor classroom, some reinforced the fort, and others built tiny leaf-covered mud traps in hopes of tracking an unsuspecting trespasser.

Vocabulary time brought another little milestone. More students volunteered to go first than in previous sessions, and nearly everyone was working at the same time. Our hands-on activity today was “Spell It, Read It, Draw It.” I spelled a vocabulary word, the kids wrote it, everyone read it aloud together, and then they illustrated it.

Wild Math was all about data and graphing. Each group selected a different tree species, eventually landing on Ash, Basswood, and Spruce. We marked those trees within our outdoor classroom boundaries with colored painter’s tape, then used click counters to count each species. Everyone reported their totals back to the group, and we recorded the data with tally marks on our graphing sheets.

Then it was time for "recess" in the backyard playground, with tag, cops and robbers, and picnic lunches.

When the timer went off, the kids requested five more minutes. The deal was simple: tell me how to say “five” in both Spanish and Arabic.

They succeeded. Five more minutes granted. 😄

We finished the day with cleanup, hammock reading, and one last game of tag before pickup.

The routines are becoming natural, participation is growing, and the kids are taking more ownership of both their learning and their space every time we meet.

Tuesday's agenda included a coffee date at The Mill Coffee Shop this morning, a trip to the post office (J has his own b...
08/11/2026

Tuesday's agenda included a coffee date at The Mill Coffee Shop this morning, a trip to the post office (J has his own business and had to ship an order), watercolor anatomy, and our spelling books from the 50's.

Why are we using spelling books from the 50's this year? The main reasons are because I really liked the simplicity, the fact that they have a history and have been through many children over the years, and we like the layout. They aren't the only spelling/reading/vocab we're using, so we aren't worried about them being the only exposure. I also really like the story of how I came to own them!

Welcome to the woods, Dragonflies! We started this month with 7 of our Mindfully Educated Outdoor Enrichment Program stu...
08/10/2026

Welcome to the woods, Dragonflies!

We started this month with 7 of our Mindfully Educated Outdoor Enrichment Program students, with our final 2 joining us in September.

Our enrichment program is one shared space, with two groups based on skill/age levels for small group activities.

We are excited for the 26-27 school year!

Another great day at the Mindfully Educated Outdoor Enrichment Program.We started the morning by welcoming our 7th stude...
08/10/2026

Another great day at the Mindfully Educated Outdoor Enrichment Program.

We started the morning by welcoming our 7th student to the group, then jumped into our task boxes and morning meeting. We practiced the date, time, temperature, and Fahrenheit-to-Celsius conversions. This is always an exciting part of the meeting, especially when they start imagining just how hot the day would feel if our Fahrenheit temperature were actually Celsius.

Vocabulary took a fun turn today when we turned our binders into a charades challenge. Each group was given a vocabulary word and 30 seconds to come up with a way to act it out for everyone else to guess. Naturally, the kids took the idea and ran with it, creating their own rounds involving relay races, jaguar fights, elephants, and brushing teeth.

During Wild Math, we practiced counting out 120 items from our Math Boxes, then grabbed our click counters and physically touched and counted 120 trees. One student made it all the way to 404 trees! We also continued exploring perimeter by counting our steps around the border of the outdoor classroom, both forward and backward, while talking about what perimeter actually means.

Our backyard free play included a picnic lunch, tag, and some very creative swing-jumping challenges before we headed back to the woods.

We finished the day with hammock reading, bracelet making, and, of course, another game of tag.

Lots of math, vocabulary, movement, creativity, teamwork, and outdoor learning packed into one day. 🌳

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Avon, MN
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