A dragonfly sitting on a persons hand while outside.

Lesson 2 | Going outside

Lesson overview

Students read or listen to a story about animals, then play a story match game by finding features from the story in their own outdoor space. They watch the Let’s read a story and Let’s build a cubby videos, build a cubby using natural or household materials, and finish with a teddy bears’ picnic. Through play, they explore how stories, animals and experiences can make places feel special.

Learning intention

  • We are learning how to play outside.

Success criteria

  • We can do an activity outside.

Activity 1 - Let’s read a story

Tasks

  • View the Let's read a story video.
  • Read a story about animals.
  • Match pictures from your story to what's outside.

Let's read a story I Field of Mars EEC (1:36min) I YouTube

Activity 2 - Let’s build a cubby

Tasks

  • View the Let's build a cubby video.
  • Build a cubby.
  • How will you play safely?

Let's build a cubby I Field of Mars EEC (0:58min) I YouTube

Activity 3 - Let’s have a teddy bears’ picnic

Tasks

  • Take your soft toys outside for a picnic.
  • Take a photo or draw a picture.

Students setting up a picnic for their soft toys.

Teddy bears picnic

Vocabulary
Special place, possum, feature, cubby, gum leaf, picnic
Lets read a story video transcript

Video transcript

...and a great big grin Snake asks slyly, "May I come in?".

We've been reading stories about animals. Animals are one of the things that make

this place so special to me. I wonder if you can go and read a story about something that belongs in your special place.

Today we were reading Goodnight Possum by Coral Vass and Sona Babajanyan. I'm going to play story-match now where I match the features from the story to the features in my garden.

I'm going to look for some red leaves, some trees, flowers, a funny-shaped leaf and some gum leaves. I found some red leaves and I counted eight in total.

Outside there are plenty of trees. Here I've matched Possum's flower.

I also found some white flowers and some purple ones. Here I found a funny-shaped leaf. And here I found some gum leaves, one brown and one green

End of transcript.

Lets build a cubby video transcript

Video transcript

Hi we're here under the babysitter trees. This is our nature play space.

Julie-Ann let's go make a cubby. Yeah, let's do it.

That was really fun. Did you see we made a really big cubby with big sticks? We found those sticks underneath our babysitter trees.

But perhaps you could make a cubby at home using sheets or blankets.

Or you could go outside and make a smaller cubby using smaller sticks, one that would be perfect for a teddy.

End of transcript.

Next lesson: Lesson 3 - Frog's walk