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My girls and I recently tried a Tinkergarten class for the first time and loved it! The Tinkergarten philosophy is that children learn through play. They offer outdoor classes all across the country for children ages 18 months to 8 years old.

Tinkergarten is on a mission to elevate childhood. We’re growing a technology-enabled network of leaders that bring families together in a natural place in their community for classes where kids learn through play. Each class becomes a tight-knit group of children and adults who learn together through well-designed, outdoor play-based activities. We help kids develop a host of important capabilities, including empathy, collaboration, creativity, persistence and problem solving. Our expert-designed classes and activities help kids ages 18 months—8 years develop core life skills while enjoying healthy, fun, engaging experiences in the physical freedom of local green spaces.

Our class location was at Falls Road Park in Potomac, Maryland and our instructor (who was wonderful) was Denise Reznik. You can find her class schedule here. There are many more classes and locations offered in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. To find one near your neighborhood, click here.

At our class, the kids started out by picking up a small bucket with a rock inside of it with their name on it. Then they took magnifying glasses and other tools to go searching for nature treasures in the park. I loved watching my girls do this activity and get so excited about the little things they found like pine cones, wild flowers, seed pods, and even caterpillars!

Next, we came back together as a group and met everyone and sang a cute “Come to Tinkergarten” song. Then Denise read the book, Stone Soup to the class. The story told an important lesson that by working together, with everyone contributing what they can, a greater good is achieved. So then after the story it was time for the kids to work together and make their own stone soup using things they found in nature! All the kids were really enthusiastic about this activity. They all found things in the park to add to the pot and by using their imagination they had created a delicious soup!

The class was a great experience for both my girls and I! It was a fun learning and social environment. The Fall classes start in just two weeks. There are a couple of free trial classes offered at the beginning of September as well. I highly recommend trying a class!

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