Outdoor & Nature-Based Learning at GMPS
Our classroom extends far beyond the classroom door.
At GMPS, outdoor learning isn’t a special event or something reserved for an occasional nice-weather day. Every class spends significant time outside throughout the year, using our campus to play, move, investigate, create, problem-solve, and experience the natural world firsthand.
Our expansive outdoor campus is one of the things that makes the GMPS experience distinctive.
For families who want nature woven even more deeply into the preschool experience, our Nature-Focused 4’s offers a 9:00–12:00 class with additional emphasis on outdoor exploration, investigation, and learning through the natural world.
So Much More Than a Playground
Our outdoor spaces give children many different ways to play, explore, and learn.
Sometimes a class gathers in one area for a particular experience or investigation. At other times, several connected outdoor spaces are open at once, with teachers positioned throughout the campus so children can move between areas and follow their own interests.
A child might ride on the Trike Track, move to the Mud Kitchen to join friends in pretend play, head into the Meadow to investigate something they noticed, and then return to the playground to dig or build.
This freedom gives children room to make choices, sustain their play, and discover where their ideas take them.
Teachers remain actively engaged throughout — supervising, observing, joining conversations, introducing materials, and extending learning as opportunities arise.
Our Outdoor Spaces
Trike Track
Our separate Trike Track gives children plenty of room to pedal, steer, navigate, and practice safety while building balance, coordination, and confidence.
Playground
Our spacious, fully fenced playground gives children room to run, climb, jump, dig, build, and play together. The sandbox, play platform, and outdoor building materials encourage construction, cooperation, and imaginative play.
Mud Kitchen
Mud, water, containers, natural materials, and imagination can become a restaurant, laboratory, construction site — or something entirely new.
Garden
Children help prepare the soil, plant, water, observe growth, and harvest. The garden gives them an opportunity to experience seasonal change and watch living things develop over time.
The Meadow
Our large open Meadow changes constantly. Children run and invent games there, sled and ski when there is snow, build snowmen, and investigate whatever the season brings.
After enough rain, a temporary “pond” forms in the Meadow, creating an entirely new environment to explore — and sometimes even attracting visiting ducks.
Watershed Nature Trail
A roughly ¼-mile walking path on our property gives classes a place for nature walks, scavenger hunts, observing seasonal changes, and looking for birds and other wildlife.
Courtyard
Mature trees make our courtyard another changing natural space, especially when fall leaves transform the ground into something to collect, investigate, jump in, and create with.
Learning Moves Outside
We don’t think of outdoor time and learning time as two different things.
The same intentional, play-based teaching that happens inside our classrooms moves outdoors with the children. Teachers observe what children notice, ask questions, introduce vocabulary and materials, suggest possibilities, and help an interesting discovery grow into deeper learning.
Outside, children might:
- count and compare natural materials
- investigate what happens to a puddle over several days
- look for patterns in leaves
- measure a garden plant
- build with sticks, blocks, and loose parts
- create stories in the Mud Kitchen
- notice insects, birds, tracks, or changing plants
- work with friends to solve a building or movement challenge
The setting changes. The intentional teaching doesn’t.Learn more about Play-Based Learning at GMPS
Every Season Brings Something New
At GMPS, outdoor learning isn’t limited to perfect weather.
Children go outside in light rain and snow. We generally head outdoors when the temperature is above 20°F and the wind chill is above 10°F.
Fall brings leaves, seeds, changing colors, and harvesting.
Winter can transform the Meadow into a place for sledding, skiing, snow building, and investigation.
Spring brings puddles, planting, mud, new growth, insects, and endless opportunities to notice change.
The outdoor environment changes every day — and that gives children something new to notice, wonder about, and explore.
When weather truly keeps us inside, our large gym gives children plenty of room to ride trikes and scooters, run, play movement games, and navigate obstacle courses.
Why Time in Nature Matters
Outdoor learning supports much more than gross-motor development. Nature gives children opportunities to investigate, take appropriate risks, solve problems, collaborate, manage frustration, and regulate their bodies and emotions.
Research also suggests that regular contact with natural environments may support children’s self-regulation, well-being, and healthy immune development.
- Learn more about nature and children’s self-regulation →
- Learn more about nature and immune health →
At GMPS, children don’t just visit nature occasionally. It is part of the environment they learn in throughout the year.
Nature-Focused 4’s
More nature woven into the preschool day
All GMPS children benefit from our outdoor campus. Our Nature-Focused 4’s is an option for families who want outdoor exploration and nature-based investigation to play an even larger role in their child’s preschool experience.
The class meets 9:00–12:00, has a traditional classroom home base, and follows the same core 4’s curriculum as our other Four’s classes.
What makes the class different is the intentional emphasis on using the natural environment as a place to investigate, create, wonder, problem-solve, and pursue longer nature-based experiences and projects.
Nature-based learning belongs to every child at GMPS. The Nature-Focused 4’s simply gives families the option to make it an even bigger part of their child’s preschool experience.Explore the Four’s Program
Room to Be a Child
Young children need room to move, get messy, wonder, test ideas, notice small things, and experience the seasons with their whole bodies.
At GMPS, we are fortunate to have the space to let them do exactly that.
Sometimes the day’s most memorable lesson begins with a puddle, a pile of leaves, a trail through the woods — or a pair of ducks that decided to visit preschool.
About the Author
Written by Karen Coan, M.A. in Education, Director of Glenview Methodist Preschool
Karen has served as Director of GMPS since 2016 and works closely with teachers and families on curriculum, school transitions, behavior guidance, safety, staff development, and program planning.
Last updated: October 2026