Outdoor Education by John Peter

Outdoor Education Centers are created to provide arts and recreation programs for students. Outdoor education aims at improving student performance, and to build co-relation between the community and the school. It should bring the children’s imagination and creations to life. Outdoor education will be a wonderful experience for the students. The students get experience in nature and group activities. Spending time in nature through outdoor education improves standardized test scores, grade-point averages and develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making. Outdoor Education classes include long hikes, hands on natural science, wall climbing, archery, fishing, swimming, canoeing and playing in the bog, etc. It also includes cooperative games to encourage team building. Between the hikes the students gain outdoor experiences. Wall climbing ensures to build determination and individual challenges. The archery and fishing will be challenging and interesting. Canoeing may be your favorite. Summer camps and workshops also provide some sort of outdoor education. Nowadays, parents realize to find ways to pack their children for summer camps to learn art, craft, dance, drama and outdoor-survival programmes. Organizations and outdoor education centers offer to teach children rock climbing, astronomy, horse riding, painting, musical instruments, kathak, story creation, theatre and basket weaving, yoga, cooking, mask-making, drawing cartoons/caricature, landscape painting and drawing, interactive games, storytelling, role plays, bonfires, tent-pitching, conversational skills, film-making module, soft skills enhancements, martial arts, modern contemporary dance, jazz, funk, rock, hip-hop, and salsa. These camps inculcate outdoor skills like route-finding and navigation, map and compass use, rescue techniques, injury prevention and treatment and hazard evaluation. It helps children find words to label and recognize feelings like anger, sadness, fear, jealousy, etc. The creative activities in the camps assist children to play, create, think and learn. Outdoor camp activities including challenging and absorbing activities make your children explore and enjoy and bring them closer to the natural world. These are also powerful team-building experiences. Children also gain active listening, organizing thoughts and ideas, and pronunciation skills. The involvement of professionals in summer camps ensures that the children not just have fun, but learn skills, invoke creativeness, build confidence, interact with peers and at the end have value added to their lives. The activities are packed and designed to challenge a child’s physical, mental and artistic abilities. Qualified nutritionist would teach healthy eating habits through non-fire cooking recipes and there’s also yoga and dance to squeeze in some health and fitness. The outdoor education, summer camps and workshops are open to students of all age group. But certain outdoor activities are only for students above 16 years old. Though the outdoor education centers, summer camps and workshops demand high fee, the skills, value and benefits it inculcates in children needs to be appreciated. Parents always welcome outdoor education and camps to crown their dear ones with value added life. Because of such parents, Nanuet Outdoor Education Center in US is proud to celebrate its 100th anniversary, recently. And the Bluewater District School Board in US honored and handed out their 2008 Awards of Excellence to 11 school volunteers who have made a significant contribution to the education system and outdoor education.