Smell the sea and feel the sky Van Morrison This quote is reminiscent of our mornings at the seashore. Some of us laid on the grass adjacent to the beach observing clouds, birds, listening and enjoying the sweet scent of the ocean. I have a fat journal full of favourite quotes. If you have my book, Outside Our Window: developing a primary nature program ,  then you are privy to some amazing thinkers about children and nature as every chapter begins with a quote.  Lately, I have been reading some of Lillian Katz's writing between writing report cards to rest my brain and thought I would share this inspiring quote " As you consider whether to move a child into formal academic training, remember that we want our children to do more that just learn how to read and write; we want them to learn in such a way that they become lifelong readers and writers. If we push our children to start learning the skills too far ahead of their own spontaneous interest i...

In my book,   Outside Our Window: developing a primary nature program   I have included a chapter on   play based activities to do outdoors which support the primary curriculum (preK to 3).  An example for a simple outdoor literacy activity Sidewalk chalk was used as an example of ABC and Word Work. This activity can easily be adjusted for all of the primary grades. As our year together draws to a close I have begun to introduce literacy games that lend themselves to family play like alphabet or sight word hopscotch.  To play this game we chose familiar words together will will help build fluency. You can choose to use new words in this game but my learning intention was fluency. The fluency will support children as they transition to independent reading in the fall. Being able to automatically recognize common sight words will enable the novice readers to focus more on comprehension rather than continuously decoding new words. To play the game the only materi...