Santa Margarita Children’s Center, OCP Demonstration Site, Marin County, CA

Santa Margarita Children’s Center (SMCC) first opened its doors in 1993. The center is nestled in the beautiful hills of Marin County, is located among several other preschool programs on a school district campus adjacent to the county’s early intervention program, and is a natural setting for an outdoor classroom.

When the center first began the process of applying for accreditation through the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), we investigated ways to bring best practices to our outside environment and found Outdoor Classroom Project® (OCP) Director, Eric Nelson, at the forefront of outdoor learning environments. After attending an OCP Specialist I Training, we found OCP to be aligned with many of NAEYC’s best practices for children. The basic premise of the Outdoor Classroom that, “everything we can do inside a classroom, we can do outside” makes for an easy approach most programs can put into practice, especially those with a limited budget for modifications.

With a few simple program adjustments SMCC began to take our children outside with much more frequency and intention. Teachers created spaces outside that mirrored those we have in the classroom and transported almost all our curriculum outside. We changed our policy to reflect children spending 70% of every day outside (with 50% in winter weather) and have given children the choice even on cold, wet days to be outdoors. More recently, SMCC became the first Outdoor Classroom Project Demonstration Site in Northern California!

Today, the outdoors has become a natural place for our children to be and nature has become a large part of our curriculum. We grow a winter wheat crop each year and harvest it in the spring to thresh, grind, and bake into bread; we are a part of Trout in the Classroom Bay Area Program and hatch trout eggs each year which we release into the local watershed once they become a fry; we explore the life cycles of a variety of insects and animals which frequent our campus – lizards, ladybugs, spiders, butterflies, and chickens; and we explore the seasons and how the weather changes what we do and how we play.

The outdoor classroom continues to be the perfect setting for exploration, wonder, experiments, and arousing the curiosity of bright, young minds. With the teachers’ guidance children can ask questions like: how much, how fast, why, what if, what do I know and what do I want to find out, etc. In addition, the outdoors naturally provides an extensive variety of necessary sensory opportunities that are known to be fundamental to a child’s ability to learn – touch, movement, smell, taste, sight, hearing, and balance – many of which do not lend themselves easily to the indoors.

Since our introduction to Eric Nelson and OCP, we have learned many things. Teachers and children have connected in ways that encourage a reciprocal environment of learning together. We are becoming much more intentional and are partnering with the children in ways that bring out the best in everyone.

Here are some lessons we have learned over the years:• If you take care of a living thing, it will flourish and grow. The more attentive you are, the better the growth.• Nature can be unpredictable. Sometimes you may have no control over an outcome. But, the possibilities to change the outcomes can be unlimited. • If you have a big project, can be fun and you can finish fast if we work together. • It’s fun to squish your toes into mud and sand. Also, puddles are fascinating.• Sitting under the shade of a tree and listening to a teacher read a book is a delightful way to spend the afternoon.• Being outside can involve a certain bit of risk, courage, and calculating. All of which help us to develop a deeper insight into our competencies. I believe the outdoors is the best place for young children to learn about each other, themselves, and the world we live in. I owe my deeper understanding of child development to the many opportunities I have had to observe children discover the world and interact with it. Our journey has just begun.

Written by: Arleen Uryu, Director at Santa Margarita Children’s Center