The grounds of the Lynwood Avenue Elementary School served as an invigorating outdoor classroom for first-grade students who recently completed a full day of outdoor learning on a sunny November day.

As part of the international Outdoor Classroom initiative, the Lynwood first-graders engaged in educational activities outside, including outdoor reading and nature walks where they observed their surrounding environment and collected samples to write about and discuss with their peers. On the nature walk students gathered acorns, leaves, sticks, rocks, feathers and removed litter along the way. 

Additionally, students in Gwendolyn Levesque’s class took part in a lesson examining decaying foods and the best way to create compost. After participating in a guided discussion about food waste, the class started the beginning stages of an experiment to discover what container pumpkin would decay in the fastest. Separate pieces of pumpkin were put into a paper bag, Ziploc bag, shoebox and Tupperware to observe. 

In the weeks to come, students will revisit the containers outside to record data on what container allowed the food waste to decompose the fastest.