Learning beyond walls: Forest Hills students thrive in outdoor spaces

Regardless of the season, the great outdoors holds something special at Forest Hills Elementary School. Recent projects to expand and improve the school’s landscaping have created a variety of nature areas. 

These include a forest trail, a hammock garden, a pollinator garden, a butterfly house, a sledding hill, an inner courtyard garden and an outdoor classroom, all designed to encourage students to spend time outside for morning meetings, exercise and exploration.

Efforts to improve the school’s outdoor spaces have been underway for the past couple of years, said Principal Joel Knorr. On May 5, Knorr, Assistant Principal Tom Walters, teachers and several fourth grade students attended the Eden Prairie School Board meeting to share how students are learning beyond the four walls of the classroom.

When Knorr became principal three years ago, he said families told him they wanted children to have more outdoor time and asked him to consider making more use of the property around the school. “We’re trying to do that in an educational way,” Knorr said.

Because Forest Hills is surrounded by city parkland, all projects require city approval. Knorr said the city has been supportive of the changes.

Knorr said improvements have been made possible by donations and hundreds of volunteer hours, with help from the Foundation for Eden Prairie Schools and Target Corp. 

The fourth graders at the meeting shared what they loved about the outdoor spaces, including exploring the forest and relaxing in the hammock hangout. In the winter, they like examining tracks in the snow to see what animals have wandered through. 

Students said they also loved watching footage from the trail camera and shared a video of two bucks fighting with each other in the dark. In addition to deer, they said they’ve seen coyotes, an albino squirrel, a possum, a fox, bunnies – and even “the wind.”

Teachers are able to use the space for outdoor lectures and hands-on lessons, many led by volunteers from the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Knorr said, “We are trying to bring field trip-type opportunities to the school, which benefits all the kids.”

Outdoor spaces enrich students’ education

Rochelle Spanel, a Forest Hills parent, is the Parent Teacher Organization’s nature lead, a recently created position. She has helped support many of the school’s outdoor projects and improvements. 

Spanel said the efforts have been community-driven, with several teachers taking lead roles, especially Jessica Cozza and Corey Johnson Anderson. “Having the support of our principal, having him give us the green light and be excited about it, has allowed this nature program to flourish,” she said.

With landscaping help from community volunteers, the school has revitalized an old nature trail that had all but disappeared over the years. With help from a company called ChipDrop, the school sourced free mulch and logs to cover the path and build benches for the outdoor classroom, Spanel said.

In addition to the nature trail, the school’s enclosed inner courtyard now features a garden with flowers, herbs and vegetables. Teaching students to care for these is important.

“We have planters that we installed last year,” Spanel said. “This spring, the second graders are planting potatoes and pumpkins that hopefully we’ll see in the fall, and other herbs and vegetables are going in next week.”

The space has a bird feeder as well as picnic tables, umbrellas and a solar-powered fountain. Teachers are able to bring classes into the courtyard to learn about gardening and for outdoor lessons. 

Spanel said nature lessons held in the courtyard and the outdoor classroom near the forest trail help children understand animal life cycles and how human actions affect various species.

“The arboretum’s master gardener program has a lot of school-oriented educational programs that they can do in the classroom, and it’s been really fun to have them come in,” Spanel said.

For example, last year, she said, a master gardener came and lectured fourth graders about bees. Students made bee houses to take home using sticks, tubes and hollow plants like reeds, as they learned about the more than 400 species of bees in Minnesota. They learned that some bees are ground-dwelling, some live in hives, and others are solitary, living in plants and on the ground. They also learned the importance of leaving some leaf litter and dead vegetation in yards during the winter so pollinating insects can use it for shelter.

Dreams for the school’s outdoor areas include planting more native wildflowers and building a viewing platform with informational signs overlooking the adjacent Nine Mile Creek watershed, Spanel said. Currently, the area surrounding the wetlands is choked with invasive buckthorn, she said, and clearing it would require help from community volunteers.

Because the land around the school belongs to the city, the nature trail and outdoor classroom are open to the public. Spanel said she hopes visitors will love what the school has created – and treat the outdoor spaces with care, knowing they enhance students’ education.