Being a teacher and lover of everything outdoors I continually find it interesting to discover just how important the outdoors is, as a teaching and learning tool. As humans, we are keen to learn from our surroundings and are continually stimulated by something new and exciting.

To further develop our creative senses it is important to learn from new challenges, and allow ourselves to continually set important goals, establish dreams and fulfil personal aspirations. 

Like many others out there, I inherently look for something new, unique and something interesting that will inevitably inspire me to want more out of this life.

In the continued pursuit of further developing excellence and I suppose continually trying to build on my own level of increased curiosity, as well as my expertise, I am creating more and more educational resources, that not only help build on my skill set, but further develop my continued efforts to bring about change, in education and society today.  I continually attempt to establish a change in the way we learn, further support what we know and encourage us to focus on how we can increase our knowledge with new ideas. 

My Educational Resources

My Education resources are varied and I am always seeking them to grow and improve. They are currently available on my TES online shop and over the past 12 months, I have attempted to gather many of my education resources used in class, into one space. As a result, I have tried to improve them and share them with others, as practical learning tools, that are practical and simple to use, either in the classroom setting or in the great outdoors.

Furthermore, many of these resources are actually FREE. Yes, they are free and in a world where we all want something for nothing, what could be better than getting something for free? 

Resource 1 - Story Stones

As a teacher, I love story writing and believe that a story can be written/told by anyone, or can be told about anything. All you just need to develop your imagination is to note them down and start developing from there.

Story Stones is a very cool activity. It involves collecting lots of stones and rocks, all shapes and sizes from your local outdoor environment. Once collected then use paint to decorate each of your rocks with different words or images of your choice. Patio paint are ideal, but you can also use colourful acrylic paints from a tube or acrylic deco pens, to enhance the designs further. In addition, if the paint is waterproof, then it will last a lot longer and obviously stand up to the weather.

You can use random words/images relating to different characters, settings and anything else you like, such as owls, ladybirds, rainbows, angry face etc.

Once complete and with your collection of story stones, you can then use them in several ways to tell stories. They can be put alongside each other to create a sequential story, with a start, middle and end. You can hide them and use them to form an outdoor scavenger hunt. Anything is possible!

From my experience using Story Stones it is very clear that all children love this activity and it really helps with story sequencing, story ideas, which can eventually lead onto long pieces of written work.

To find out more, please click here.

Resource 2 - Nature Walk

I guess most of us go for walks in the countryside, but I feel most of us only see it as something that has a starting point and a finish. 

With that said a ‘Nature Walk’ can have endless possibilities and it can better referred to as a journey as opposed to simply taking a walk. In my mode of thinking the possibilities are endless and it is how you bring those ideas to your audience is what matters.

A woodland environment obviously offers the perfect setting, with a wide range of sights and sounds to be enjoyed. An open landscape offers and equal amount of enjoyment too. Simply get your enthusiastic followers to observe, take notes and pictures, then generate these ideas into extended pieces of writing, artwork or spoken word.

To find out more, please click here.

Resource 3 - Using Your Senses

Using our senses seems a very obvious thing to do, especially when we are spending times in the outdoors, but it is in fact something that we do often overlook.

I feel the possibilities of using your senses are endless and the learning that can take place with this style of learning, is pretty incredible. Our senses are used every day, but do we really use them in a way that allows us to come out of our comfort zone, take risks, build resilience and engage in learning something new.?

This resource can be easily adapted to suit the needs of your audience and the range of challenge can be stretched accordingly. I have used this resource several times in various natural outdoor settings and I have used it to create a senses challenge in the classroom. It worked well and has plenty of scope to be further developed.

This resource can be found here.

Many thanks for reading this latest blog post and my continued attempts to highlight some of the good stuff available out there. A selection of cool resources that work, resources that offer challenge and support positive learning attributes, in a meaningful way.

To achieve these resources and strive to make more I am always seeking inspiration from my own practice, my experiences and of course, learning from others. If you like what I do, then please feel free to share these ideas with other educators. If you have good ideas and would be keen to collaborate on something new, then please get in touch by email: hello@garethmate.com

You can view all of my available resources here and if you require something new, or bespoke, then I am happy to make something for you.

You can Buy Resources From My Store