Nature is a really great Montessori classroom. There are plenty of things at the child’s eye level to look at; many things they can manipulate with their hands; lots of opportunity for movement and big work.

Children need as much time as possible outdoors to explore freely and get up to their own discoveries. You may find they even develop these activities on their own! But if you’re looking for Montessori ways to engage your child while they are outside, here are some of my favorite ideas.

Rough and Smooth Boards

My oldest child actually set this up independently for his sister about a week ago! They took a leaf from a magnolia tree (“This is smooth!”) and a piece of bark that he found on the ground (“This is rough!”) and modeled touching them.

They sat on the ground for a good while—and what started as an introduction to the concept of rough and smooth became a collection and sorting of all the things they could find that were rough or smooth.

Handwashing

This lesson is actually a SUPER great one to do outside, because it allows the children to explore and experience the water without worries of leaks. We have a bucket that has a small plastic dish that holds soap inside of it, and we keep it outside in our garage all the time.

When we need to wash up because we got super muddy? It’s there! If someone feels like exploring it? It’s there! We are using every opportunity we can these days to emphasize (and re-emphasize!) the handwashing process.

Red Rods

We love gathering sticks and then sorting them from shortest to tallest/longest. If you’re feeling particularly crafty, you could measure and cut the sticks with pruners to the correct length—it’s not necessary but would be a way to insure each stick is a distinct length!

Though you lose the mathematical measure of distance and isolation of quality that you receive in the traditional material, you gain an added layer of challenge when it comes to visual discrimination. It’s also a really great way to help redirect stick play when kid’s get a little unsafe with them. We use ours for kindling when we’re done!

Cards and Counters

Once you do this one outdoors, you’ll never want to do it inside again! You can either bring out wooden tiles or index cards with numbers on them, or write the number with sidewalk chalk or using a stick in the sand or dirt. If you want to count from 1-10 you’ll need 55 of whatever item you are counting.

Acorns, buckeyes, rocks, seed pods, flower petals, leaves—there are so, so many options!

I typically rely on the child to start collecting and then suggest the activity as an extension of the collecting work—it’s a great way to put use and purpose into large nature collections!

These are just 4 fast ideas that have worked for us—but the truth is, there are very few materials that cannot be either sourced from something in the backyard or adapted to be done outside. I hope this will encourage you to consider having more of your work cycle in the fresh air!