Components of an Outdoor Classroom: 

Sand and water play area. A sand pit offers the wild play opportunities of the beach. If you must cover it think about using light fabric that lets air and water through and is easy to cover and recover. Sand is best if it can be mixed with water.

Water is one of the greatest play and experimentation elements for young children. Create opportunities for water play and discovery. Introduce water to the sand area. It can be as simple as adding a hose line to the sand area. Simple drainage underneath the sand will keep water from pooling up. Use hoses, water tables, tubs, sprinklers, gutters, spray bottles, and ice!

Vegetation Include trees, bushes, flowers, grasses and vines. Start an organic garden. Well-arranged plants for children can become playhouses, hideouts, castles, and far-off places. Group your plantings to form small rooms, hidey nooks, hollows, and secret spaces. Plantings become wildlife habitats and say “welcome” to birds, chipmunks, butterflies and fuzzy caterpillars. Herb gardens are a good first step. Protect the trees! An existing mature tree, or a gentle hill can be the area’s best natural feature.

Structures Create a lean-to, a playhouse, a grotto, a platform, a playhouse, a mini tree house, or a slide embedded in a grassy berm. Provide equipment and materials that can be changed. Add feeders, birdbaths and birdhouses. The birds will thank you by building nests, laying eggs and having babies. Create a mosaic or mural. Make a material wish list.

Sound exploration: add metal, wood and bamboo chimes. Hide tiny bells in bushes and trees that children interact with. Install PVC talk tubes so children can throw their voices to other parts of the play yard. Build giant “thunder drums” out of steel or plastic barrels. Give children sound exploration opportunities that ring and resonate deeply in the body and sound harmonious to the ear. (You’ll appreciate it too!) Sound can be an enchanting creator of moods and melodies. Provide a thunder drum, kettle drum, rainmaker, chimes, and a quiet area.

Topography of a play area is important. Bumps, berms, and hills help to create spaces and plateaus to climb to, lookout from and roll down. Build decks on top. Beams, logs and stumps create places to jump from 24 to 36 inches high

Textures create different moods and a different feel. Children use their bodies in different ways when travelling over different types of materials. Create a secret path from stepping stones, wood chips, bricks, cobble stones, flagstones, log sections, colored gravel, or concrete-molded pavers with fun items stuck into them. Make a “wobbly walk”. Tricycle tracks are extremely important for young children.

Miscellaneous materials for an outdoor classroom:
Storage bins, benches, cages, boxes, shelves, hooks, crates, sacks, tricycles, wagons, wheelbarrows, balls, bags, jump ropes, buckets, shovels, sifters, bicycle tires, tubes, tubs, easels, chalk, paint brushes, cartons, blocks, crates planks, sawhorses, rope, duct tape, poles with pulleys and clotheslines, magnifying glasses, compass, measuring tape, jars, rain gauges, chemicals (food coloring, baking soda, paint), beanbags, balls, stones, blocks, parachutes, shovels, brooms, sand sifters, turkey basters, milk crates, PVC pipes, bells, traffic cones, hoops, cups, bowls, tubs, plastic vases, wood tools, washboards, butterfly nets.

Use the Consumer Product Safety Commission Guidelines