Raise your mittens: Outdoor learning continues into winter

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Cindy Soule’s fourth graders in Maine's largest city have studied pollination in a community garden. They solved an erosion problem that was damaging trees. They learned about bear scat.

Then came a fresh layer of snow and temperatures that hovered around freezing — but her students were unfazed.

Bundled up and masked, they scooted outside with their belongings in buckets. They collected their pencils and clipboards, plopped the buckets upside down in the snow, took a seat and went to work.

The lesson? Snow, of course, and how snowflakes are formed.

Schools nationwide scrambled to get students outdoors during the pandemic to keep them safe and stop the spread of COVID-19. Now, with temperatures plummeting, a smaller number of schools — even in some of the nation's most frigid climes — plan to keep it going all winter long, with students trading desks in warm classrooms for tree stumps or buckets.

“It’s the healthiest, safest place for us to be right now. Anything that we can do to get kids outdoors for longer periods of time is vital. This is where we need to be right now,” said Anne Stires, an outdoor learning consultant and advocate in Maine.

In New Hampshire, fourth and fifth graders are still outside at James Faulkner Elementary School in Stoddard after building an outdoor classroom by clearing a patch of woods and adding a fire pit, rock seating and hammocks.

“They’re begging me to go out,” said teacher Amanda Bridges.

In Colorado, kindergarteners through sixth graders in the Lake County school district are in classrooms for half the week. For the other half, they study and then engage outdoors.

A preschool at the University of Minnesota is testing an all-outdoor model where kids are allowed inside only to use the...