We can use outdoor activities to bring an extra fun element to learning, implementing these Math skills into the real world.
We can use Math to help children understand more about the activities and adding an extra bit of adventure to the experience we can make it all the more memorable.
We can learn lots of different things by taking our lessons outside! Here's how outdoor activities help us practice things like weights, measurements, shapes, and space:
Climbing – Measuring Heights: When we go climbing, we can work out how high we are going. This helps us understand height as a measurement. For example, we can use a tape measure or even count the number of climbing holds to determine how tall a climbing wall is. (ADD)Using a variety of measurements and looking at metric and imperial
Target Sports – Working with Ratios: In target sports like archery or throwing a ball at a target, we can practice using ratios. For example, if we want to get better at hitting the target, we could work out how many times we hit it compared to how many times we missed. This helps us understand the relationship between the two numbers, which is the basis of ratios!
Bushcraft – Weights for Cooking: When we do bushcraft activities, like cooking on a campfire, we can explore weights by measuring how much food or water we need. For example, if we’re making soup, we could use a balance scale to weigh the ingredients and see how different items compare in weight.
Paddling – Time, Speed, and Distance: When we go paddling, we can learn about time, speed, and distance. We can time how long it takes to paddle to a certain point, then figure out how far we’ve gone based on how fast we’re paddling. This helps us understand how these things are connected!
These outdoor activities give us fun and exciting ways to practice the things we learn in class, like measuring, comparing, and working with numbers. By connecting the lessons to activities we can actually do outside, learning becomes even more interesting and useful!
We would typically run these as 2 hour activity sessions. It can be ran for Key Stage 2 or 3. Key curriculum links for Key Stage 3 include:
compare lengths (m/ cm/mm) ,compare different measures, including money in pounds and pence
compare mass (kg/g)
compare volume/ capacity (l/ml)
measure lengths (m/ cm/mm)
estimate diferent measures, including money in pounds and pence
measure mass (kg/g)
know angles are measured in degrees: estimate and compare acute, obtuse and refex angles. find unknown angles in any triangles, quadrilaterals and regular polygons
identify right angles, recognise that two right angles make a halfturn, three make three quarters of a turn and four a complete turn; identify whether angles are greater than or less than a right angle
identify:
angles at a point and one whole turn (total 360o)
angles at a point on a straight line and 1 2 a turn (total 180o)
other multiples of 90. To recognise angles where they meet at a point, are on a straight line, or are vertically opposite, and find missing angles.
draw given angles and measure them in degrees
illustrate and name parts of circles, including radius, diameter and circumference and know that the diameter is twice the radius