What the schoolyard movement adds is the possibility of blending play and teaching. There's no reason learning shouldn't be fun. For the best results, students have to be involved from the beginning, defining and creating their own environment and recreating it every day, as humans are destined to do. For starters, it facilitates most of what we call the educational reform agenda. The ongoing outdoor project such as a garden provides a context that the class can return to again and again, providing continuity to otherwise disconnected lessons.
Interdisciplinary teaching comes naturally, as do team projects.
Instead of the adult having to have all the answers, they instead model how to be a learner. When the schoolyard truly becomes an extension of the classroom, teachers move easily among indoor and outdoor activities, bringing in samples to study under the microscope, generating ideas for library research, reading stories that illuminate our relationship with nature, or collecting data to share on the Internet. Indeed, the schoolyard can provide a world of things to do with all those expensive computers. Beyond the curriculum Equally important to teachers are the meta-curricular benefits of schoolyard projects. Best of all, though, was the character lesson in patience and perseverance, which paid off when my students came back in September to find the 'totally awesome' 8-foot sunflowers they had started from seeds in April.