Forest Tuesdays takes class to the outdoors

BEMIDJI - Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and children at Schoolcraft Learning Community took the one they do every Tuesday.
It’s called Forest Tuesday, when kindergartners and first-graders trade chairs and desks for log seats by the fire, and papers and pencils for fingers in the sand.
Their boots crunch twigs and knock acorns on the forked path to a clearing beside Turtle River Lake, to a classroom where the wind turns cheeks red and bright leaves flutter down like confetti.
Kindergartners spend the entire morning here - first-graders much of the afternoon - taking turns at stations that change with the season: making fires, collecting leaves or writing letters in the sand. Then it’s playtime.
“They get tuckered out,” said Sarah Wilson, the school’s instructional guide, grinning like only a teacher with tired kids can. The several-weeks-old forest program, modeled after programs in Europe and patches of the United States, is an enterprise between Wilson and Anna Wallin, Schoolcraft’s kindergarten teacher.
The kids started Tuesday in a ring around the fire pit, giving clockwise high-fives and greeting their neighbor by name, even if some students needed help remembering.
“Why can’t we play first?” one asked.
“Why are we doing stations?” asked another.
“Can I go to the bathroom?”
Donations from families and the community paid for some of the students’ outdoor gear, and Wallin started a GoFundMe page that has raised more than $500 to support the program. But a nice thing about Forest Tuesday, Wilson said, is nature produces most of the supplies.
One girl packed a pile of sand into a mini mountain, carefully setting twigs at the peak. “It’s a volcano,” she said. “The sticks are the lava.”
Others climbed trees, built forts, hunted shells on the lakeshore. Fresh air and exercise can help heal the mind and body, Wilson said.
Kindergarten and first-grade teachers plan to go out every Tuesday the temperature tops zero. Future lessons will include animal-tracking and how to determine whether berries are safe to eat--a question teachers have already addressed with some kids.
“It’s about learning the routine of being there,” learning concepts shared by the wild and the classroom, Wilson said.
One girl inched away nervously when Wilson showed her how to make a spark with flint and steel.
“It can’t hurt you,” Wilson said. She held up a piece of paper showing a bear in a ranger’s hat and blue jeans, a shovel in his hand. “Who’s this?”
“A bear.”
“A scary bear.”
“Yogi Bear.”