There's no place like home

E.T phone home. There’s no place like home. Home is where the heart is. It’s not just a house, it’s a home. I still call Australia home. Give me a home amongst the gum trees. Be like your place.

These song titles, famous movie quotes, thoughts shared from very intelligent humans and every day sayings came to mind as I set up to explore the concept of homes and habitats with over 100 Foundation and Year 1 students in recent days.

Home. I had found my hook, my connection and way into to the story that would be shared.

I love the opportunity to bring learning to life in the outdoors and through play, whether that be indoors or out. I love hearing everything from ‘I can’t do it’ or ‘I’m bored!’ and then, ‘Can we do this again tomorrow’? or ‘Can I take this home?’

I am a firm believer that every class would benefit from learning outdoors and every teacher would too. There is more room, an obvious point I know, but once you spread out, people start to breathe out and relax. There is more connection (to concepts and one another) and there is opportunity.

So much opportunity.

Anyway, back to homes and habitats and 100 JP students who are about to come running down the hill.

Our plan was ..

1. To create houses (cubbies) and turn these into homes

2. To talk about how environments around Australia inform the type of houses built

3. Experiment with building different types of homes. I settled on lighthouses, floating houses and insect homes.

We were to finish with a real estate challenge that involved creating a marketing reel to advertise homes for sale. This is an idea I found in Juliet Robertson’s book, Dirty Teaching. (Idea 5.4 on Page 76)

There were so many curriculum links involved…and that’s a box that needs ticking for sure. I am a firm believer that outdoor learning can and should be connected to your learning indoors. Connections are everything.

The plan for the day was born from a consult with the team to explore what the students were already doing. The intention of the day was purely centered around what was already being discussed in the classroom. I value time, and therefore will only walk on site in a school where I know, what I can offer makes great use of student’s time, teachers time and my own.

If you want to create something similar in your school yard or at home, use any and all of the ideas below as you wish to get you started. You have to do things in a way that suits you best, so make sure you’re thinking about being safe and what is the right fit for you. This is purely one experience I am sharing, that worked in this particular instance.

Resources came from..

Bamboo - I sourced the bamboo from my sisters back yard. Bamboo needs constant thinning out. Knowing someone who can benefit from you clearing out their bamboo forest, is a great sustainable and cost-effective way to gather material for frames. It’s a bit hard to chop them off at the bottom, but there are plenty of gardening tools designed for this purpose.

Material – I went to one op shop and purchased about 10 sheet and doona cover sets. At least double bed sized. They all cost around $3 to $5 each. I then put a call out to friends and family to see if anyone was doing a clear out. This was a great way to add to the collection. I’ve now got three large bags of material.

I cut one double bed sheet into long strips and this is what I used to tie each cubby frame together before students began.

Each cubby needed at least 2 sheets to cover it, with most groups wanting at least 4 pieces of material so that they could decorate and make ‘more walls’ and cover the floor. See through material (like sarongs and sheer curtains) were also useful as these became windows and decorations.

To make lighthouses, I put out large tubs of log rounds and Jenga blocks (sourced from a discount store.) If I do something like this again, I will add other loose parts, such as the cardboard rolls and balsa wooden off cuts I collected from It’s Not Garbage – Creative Play Resources.

Empty soft drink bottles would be great (even better with a bit of cellophane in them perhaps to be the lights). I find that once you get started with something like this, the ideas simply evolve.

I asked my Dad to cut up a gum tree branch that had fallen down near home in a recent storm. My Mum and I sanded over 100 log rounds (we used a disk sander) once he had sliced them up. This took about an hour to do. Two cups of tea. I will oil these with a natural oil in coming weeks to protect them. A summer holiday job!

Floating houses were made with 30cm bamboo sticks (a bit like skewers) from a hardware store, rubber bands and 10cm lengths of rope I had cut up and scored off with a heat source, to stop them from fraying.

I had shallow trays of water for testing the designs. I’ve used my own collection of sticks for this before, but they get water logged very quickly, so I did change to the skewer style stick. Corks and paper bark are a good addition to this. Again, once I start thinking about what might work to add to this collection, the ideas keep coming.

Perhaps a pool noodle sliced up into ‘rounds’ would add value as these could be threaded onto rope and attached?

The insect homes were made from clay. We used clay from a local store. I did think about making some small domes out of chicken wire and experimenting with making mud huts, or thatched roofing, or using ice cube trays to make mud bricks. I’d love to see if you could make an igloo from a bag of ice too. I didn't get any photos of these!

I also gave students a length of 30cm or so jute string and they tied on pieces of material to make their own bunting. This was part of turning houses into homes.

The material we used was from the pillowcases of the sheet sets I had purchased. I do some relief teaching at a local kindy who have so many wonderful ideas…this was their great idea. The have lots of lovely material on offer, so the bunting at kindy was stunning. I also saw this on display at a regional kindy I visited too.

The building of homes and DIY bunting could be done indoors with numerous ways to connect math's and literacy to these play-based, creative experiences.

Outdoors, the children had a great time and the teachers enjoyed listening to the conversations and creative expressions of students. It was busy, for sure. The energy was a positive one and I didn’t hear anyone say ‘when are we going back to the classroom’.

The worst part for students, was having to say goodbye to these well loved homes at the end of the day. Opportunity and possibility are two words that seem to have stuck with me from this day out. All in all...

I love every day like this, because I know where we are going, but I never know how we are going to get there.

I was approached by a group of teachers who were in the depths of an inquiry into habitats and homes and asked if I could support this unit with some outdoor learning ideas. I have attached the info sheet I created for them here, if you would like a copy. It’s perfectly imperfect. Use the ideas as you wish and make them your own.

This lovely school actually took me up on my offer to come and run an outdoor learning day for them. Here is the program I wrote for our day together, which may help you create your own outdoor learning session. The blog post above, are thoughts from that wonderful day and some tips for anyone else who might find these ideas useful.

*All images taken by Maria Taylor and can be shared and used for your own learning with permission.