Outdoor learning spaces are few and far between, but Battle Ground Public School’s alternative K-12 school has seen its space continue to thrive.
River Homelink in Battle Ground continues to prioritize its outdoor space by creating a willow hut for an outdoor classroom and allowing a habitat area to thrive and even growing produce.
The school’s addition of a living willow hut is still growing as last school year Kris Potter, outdoor learning coordinator at River Homelink, used the help of an aspiring Eagle Scout to plant over 60 willow tree saplings in a circle that will ultimately form a natural covered area big enough for a classroom to utilize.
“We had three classes that came out here yesterday, and they had little pieces of cardboard that they sat on and we did some stuff in [the willow hut],” Potter said.
The willows won’t grow to be watertight, but the leafed roof will provide a shady space for an entire classroom to use, Potter added.
The entire River Homelink Outdoor Learning Space was once a large patch of grass. The habitat area began in 2015 and has continued to thrive and provide urban wildlife a safe habitat. The students expressed their love for watching bird nests and finding small critters and insects right on their school’s campus.
Between the habitat area and the willow hut is a large swath of vegetable gardens. The school has two gardening electives, a kindergarten through fourth-grade and a fourth through eighth-grade gardening elective, Potter said. Potter also teaches a nature studies course for students in second through sixth grades.
“I’m always trying to encourage the regular teachers to bring their kids out,” Potter said. “But now that they have a place that they can actually come out to, even if they’re going to do silent reading or read aloud, even if they’re working on a math sheet, they can come out here and sit and do it outside. There’s so many benefits to being outside and being surrounded by green things.”
During the first week of the school year, Potter led nearly two dozen parents, teachers, community members and students in an effort to spruce up the outdoor space. The volunteers pulled weeds, removed dead limbs and spread wood chips.
With the outdoor learning space spruced up and thriving, teachers at River Homelink have found the space to be beneficial and enjoyable.
“It’s an opportunity to bring the textbook to the outside and so more kids can be involved with their hands in the outdoors,” teacher Vicki Campbell said. “Last year, my class came out and we did the bean planting, and so now this year they came back to school, they’re able to see what they did last spring.”
Students study different kinds of leaf structures, do weathering and erosion experiments and more in Campbell’s class when they take their textbook to the outdoor learning space.
On Thursday, Sept. 7, some of the primary school students picked fresh berries from trees and searched for insects. The students said they enjoy watching the pretty plants grow, being able to do gardening activities, finding the critters under logs and many other things that most schools can’t do without a field trip.
