Scuola all'Aperto

Referred to as "Outdoor Learning", for Academic Year 2020/2021 our Scuola took the opportunity  to re-imagine our curriculum utilizing our outdoor and natural environment within which to base our Italian language learning curriculum.

Our "attivitá" and daily learning is in accordance with our monthly themes and this includes what Mother Nature presents us outdoors. We make the outdoors our Italian language learning "book" as it provides authentic, everyday vocabulary, math concepts, geography, science, art and music. 

One of the features of Scuola all'Aperto is that we spend about half our class time outdoors. This means that we are learning beginning writing skills indoors and then creating and learning outdoors based on what we do as "prep" for our outdoor activity. Here we learned indoors to write the letter "B b" for "Barca" (Boat) and then created one using materials outdoors.

As such, we experience and learn what all the "stagioni" (seasons) have to teach us. This means we learn and happily are surprised by the quiet beauty  of "i colori dell'autunno" ([the colours of Fall]pictured above) to how "la neve cambia" in order for us to use it to construct an Inukshuk that we leave in our "foresta" for others to enjoy and know that we are learning about our land and what it has to offer us in learning and being.

...and the incredible "forza del vento" (force/strength of the wind) that we need to respect and when safe, can experiment and understand how it can make things "volare" (fly).

Ultimately, we hope our students will take away from this new adventure of Scuola all'Aperto the love of learning and speaking Italian and how it is connected and can be connected to inside the classroom and more importantly, OUTside the classroom within a world full of beauty created by Mother Nature and all its wonderful surprises.