Experiential learning
Some (if not all) of. the best learning happens outside the classroom, so much so that many families choose to do all their learning outside the classroom. When children learn through experience, they have a powerful emotional and physical connection to what they learned and are able to reflect on what they learned, helping them shape critical thinking skills and retain information. Outdoor instruction, where children learn in nature is so important for developing science, math and artistic skills, physical and emotional development as well as learning about sustainability and developing a connection to nature. The resources our city has to offer for learning are endless. A visit to the park, museum, cultural organizations, a trip to the symphony are all fantastic ways to encourage your child’s sponge-like mind to absorb all the learning opportunities around them!
“For the child. . . it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused - a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love - then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response . . . It is more important to pave the way for a child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts that he is not ready to assimilate." - Rachel Carson
