Annabel checks out grey headed cone flower seeds with a magnifier.
Six-year-old Daniel looks through a magnifying glass during his class outdoor learning experience behind Scenic Heights Elementary School Sept. 27 in Minnetonka.
It was a glorious, fall afternoon. A few leaves littered the ground, but most lingered on the trees. They hadn't yet begun to morph into their orange and golden hues.
The sky was a clean shade of blue. Occasional birds cut high overhead in V-formations. The sun was direct, bright and hot.
Most kids were inside, stuck behind classroom desks, staring out the windows and wishing the clock would hurry up and release them to the outdoors.
Truth be told, the teachers might be thinking the same thing. For one lucky group of first graders and their teacher, however, that wish had come true.
It wasn't yet the end of the school day, but they were already outside.
Twenty-one first graders sat cross-legged on the ground, listening closely to the words from Stacey Sigurdson's mouth.
"How does nature move seeds to new places?" she asked.
"Squirrels," answered one child. "Animal poop," said another.
"That's right," said Sigurdson, a naturalist employed by the Three Rivers Park District.
On this day, Sigurdson was spending her morning and afternoon at Minnetonka's Scenic Heights Elementary School.
Over the course of the day, she met with all four of Scenic Heights' first-grade classrooms in a wooded plot of land behind the school and led them down a nature path in search of seeds.
The 4.3-acre patch of woods behind Scenic Heights Elementary is owned by the district and has been there since the building was constructed in 1967.
The land includes woodlands, wetlands, a pond and a prairie.
When the school first opened, the district maintained a few rough trails through the land, which butts up to Purgatory Park.
But after a while, those trails fell into disrepair and the vegetation was allowed to grow wild.
In the past few years, however, the land experienced a renewal thanks to Dawn Christensen, a fourth grade teacher at Scenic Heights.
While researching invasive species so she could teach a unit on the subject, she ran across information about Buckthorn, a particularly aggressive plant.
Christensen wandered into the wooded area behind and school and discovered it was overrun with Buckthorn.
As many good teachers do, she seized upon this backyard opportunity to give her students a hands-on learning experience with an invasive species.
She organized a community event to weed out the plant and dubbed it Buckthorn Bust.
That was five years ago, Christensen said. The Buckthorn Bust has grown every year since then.
For the past two years, Christensen added, the school worked to restore the land and make it more accessible. With the intent to use the land as a teaching tool, the school has named it the Scenic Heights Outdoor Learning Center.
Christensen organized a committee comprised of teachers, parents and community members that meets regularly to discuss plans for restoring the land and fund-raising efforts.
Beyond the Buckthorn Bust, the committee has overseen the widening of walking paths, the planting of native trees and the creation of clearings so that classrooms can gather for discussions.
The city installed a new water drainage pipe on the land, a scout troop build a foot bridge over a muddy stream and in 2006 the Department of Natural Resources certified the area as a school forest.
For the third year in a row, the Scenic Heights Parent Teacher Association funded two on-site naturalists.
All students meet outside with the naturalist three times a year. The naturalists' lessons support the school's science curriculum.
While the first graders use the land to learn about life cycles and seeds, the fifth graders use the land to learn about winter survival shelters.
Plus, the school's teachers have begun using the area without the naturalists to teach other subject areas.
For example, the art teacher has held drawing lessons among the trees.
Other teachers have brought students into woods for lessons on descriptive writing.
Christensen has gotten so involved in the creation of and support of the Outdoor Learning Center that she is taking this school year as a sabbatical to work on its promotion.
"I'm not a certified naturalist," she said, brushing aside any implication that she is a nature-loving hippie.
She pointed to a row of trees on the property. "I used to think these were birch trees. They're not. They're aspen," she laughed.
"I've always loved nature. It centers you," she said. "I've found it reaches kids in ways you don't expect it to. The kid you're having a hard time connecting with in the classroom suddenly connects in nature."
Because Christensen saw so many students connect with nature through the Outdoor Learning Center, she plans to use this year to foster more opportunities for young people to be outdoors and actively learning.
She wrote several grants and sought private donations. She hopes to oversee the construction of a covered deck on the land, clear a better path to the pond and erect a welcome sign in the coming year.
Christensen will also spend this year developing curriculum to further use of the learning center. She would also like to reach out to other schools in the district and invite them to come and use the area.
Plus, she would like to create a pen pal program with an urban school.
"It would be great if we could invite inner city kids out here who don't normally have a chance to be surrounded by nature," she said.
While Christensen has a busy year ahead of her, Colleen Puzak, a first grade teacher at Scenic Heights, was content to tromp through the woods on a beautiful fall day with her students looking for seeds.
"The kids are so engaged outside," Puzak said. "The kids get so excited. One of them practically climbed in the naturalist's lap. They really do make connections and have revelations that stick with them."
"Last winter," Puzak recalled, "the kids ran across a blood trail out there in the snow. A fox had gotten a squirrel or bird or something. You can just imagine how intrigued they were. They made up all sorts of stories about what might have happened. It was a mystery."
"It was fantastic that they could be out there with a certified naturalist, someone who noticed it, was knowledgeable about it and could really teach them about what they were seeing." Puzak added.
"And having first graders out there is just so fun," she said. "To them, the woods is this huge place. Even today, one of them asked, 'Do we know the way back?'"
