EEA RESOURCES
Outdoor Learning Activities

Outdoor Learning 
What can you teach in an outdoor classroom? Anything you teach indoors! Outdoor learning provides real-world authenticity for investigations, observations, problem solving, modeling, data collection and analysis, argumentation, experimentation, and research. Below are sample learning experiences for your consideration. 

50 Curated Activities for Earth Month or Any Month

Cool and engaging hands-on activities for schoolyard, backyard, and classroom.

Make a Cloud Viewer

Grow your Eco-Handprint

Design & Create a Pollinator Habitat

. Explore Outdoors with SEEK!

Join the City Nature Challenge

Take a Hike

Plant a Garden from Kitchen Scraps

Play Backyard Bingo

Build a Bee Box

Find Nature Everywhere

Infuse Oil with Herbs

Compost Veggie Scraps

Conduct a Backyard Bio-Blitz

Become a Birder

Make a Daisy Chain Crown

Make a Pine Cone Birdfeeder

Build a Rain Garden

Cast Animal Tracks

Grow a Strawberry and Extract its DNA

Plant Sunflowers to Remove Soil Toxins

Keep a Nature Journal

Become a Budburst Citizen Scientist

Make Soil Donuts

Collect Rocks

Read outside

Build A Fort

Reduce / Refuse Waste

Camp

Invent a Contraption

Go on a Scavenger Hunt

Do a Soil Test

Skip Rocks

Press Flowers

Make Compost with Worms

Grow Milkweed for Picky Eaters (Monarch Caterpillars)

Recognize Poison Ivy

Make a Scale Model of the Solar System

Build Babylegs and Trawl for Microplastics

Make Beads from Recycled Magazines

Make Seed Balls

Mine a Cookie

Grow Your Own Fish Tacos

Grow a Red Cabbage and use it to Test pH

Paint Outside

Explore DRAWDOWN Solutions to Climate Change

Read History in Tree Rings

Make a Time Capsule

Engineer a Curiosity Challenge

Design an Obstacle Course

Grow Giant Veggies

Wrap up Earth Month with the City Nature Challenge

Free, family-friendly fun! Download the I-Naturalist app, take pictures of living things, and upload them. Click for more info. 

What is CoOL?

The Council of Outdoor Learning (CoOL) is an EEA initiative that focuses on the design, development, use, and sustainability of outdoor learning environments on school campuses. CoOL provides tips and techniques for those who want to create outdoor classrooms or learning stations, hosts an annual symposium to share resources and strategies for teaching outdoors, curates a collection of outdoor learning activities that are integrated with state standards, and provides professional learning workshops, resources and webinars for teachers and non-formal educators.