3 Ways to Bring Math Class Outside

Feeling a bit of spring fever? Me too! I can’t wait to spend more time outside, and I'm sure your students feel the same way.

When I taught elementary math, spring was my favorite time of year. That’s because testing was over and I finally had time to do more fun, project-based math learning. Plus with better weather, I could take my students outside and teach math there!

Now that I’m at Scholastic DynaMath, I work with teachers to develop elementary math lessons that are engaging, interesting, and fun. These are my 3 favorite activities and spring-themed articles that bring real-world elementary math outside.

One thing I loved doing when I taught geometry was taking students on a shape scavenger hunt! Have students explore their surroundings to identify the shapes found in different objects. Students can create a chart to draw the objects and list attributes such as number of sides, angles, and classification. When the weather is nice, you can do this outside and look for the shapes found in nature! You can use our Problem of the Month activity—Shapes All Around Us—which has a chart already created for you.

This activity also works well with our Scholastic DynaMath article about a professional sand sculptor named Sue McGrew. She carves incredibly detailed sculptures for festivals, concerts, and other events. She begins first with basic geometric shapes, and so we developed a math lesson where students identify the polygons found in her work. For reinforcement, try our Color by Shape: Sandcastle skills sheet (one of my favorite worksheets!).

If your students are anything like mine, they love math activities where they can create, build, and manipulate things to learn math skills in a concrete way. Last year, we created a hands-on math activity where students build their own bird’s nest. Students use estimation skills to determine how many items they need to build a nest—like sticks and leaves—and then gather the items outside. Then they build and test their birds’ nests to see how many eggs it can safely hold.

This activity complimented a Scholastic DynaMath article we did about gyrfalcons, the largest falcon species on the planet. They live in the tundra regions of North America, Europe, and Asia and lay their eggs on steep cliffs.

Laura Commins is a sixth grade teacher in Indiana, and I love her four corners measurement activity. Typically this is done in a classroom, but it can easily be taken outside. You label 4 corners or areas with different measurements and give students cards labeled with a unit of measurement, measurement scenario, or a measurement tool. Then students can walk, run, skip, hop, or jump to the matching corner with the appropriate measurement. This can easily be adapted for other math topics as well!

We paired this activity with our article about the Mini Tough Mudder, a mile-long obstacle course for kids aged 5 through 12. Participants have to climb, jump, and crawl their way through eight obstacles four times each. The article spotlighted an 11-year-old named Michael Ashurst who completed a Mini Tough Mudder in New Jersey last fall.

Developing these obstacle courses requires a lot of measurement, and so our math skill incorporated choosing the appropriate measurement and tool to represent a given quantity. You could even challenge your students to work in small groups and design their own outdoor obstacles!