A Few Outdoor Writing Activities

Compiled from an AWITS Writers brainstorm
1. Activity: Human Camera 
(big trusting exercise, set a lot of guidelines for respectful participation)

• Give students  a list of things - like a scavenger hunt (e.g. something green, something soft)
  
• Kids partner up - position kid in front of sometime outside, kids has eyes closed
  
• Tap kid, kid opens eyes, takes in their view, then closes eyes. Kids take turns being the camera.
  
• Kids write from what they observed. Good material for Haiku writing!
  

2. Activity: Scavenger hunt - 

• Send students outside with a paper bag and  a list that engages their senses as well as gives them opportunities for discernment (e.g.  find something prickly, find something surprising...). 
• If  items won't fit in the bag, ask them to notice and remember for sharing later. 
• Students bring the bag back inside and share what they found with a partner using both their "naked eye" and their "imaginative eye"--figurative devices 
• They then write a line of poetry about each item--or pick one item to write a poem.  
  

3. Activity: Paper towel roll - watching a part of the forest
Pair up - one observer observes and dictates, other is a reporter and writes
Use material for further writing, poem writing.