OUTDOOR EDUCATION

Learning beyond the classroom borders.

 "The Ütopya grounds and outdoor facilities are designed to offer a balanced learning environment."

On entering Ütopya, the first striking image is a vast garden which is fully utilized by the children throughout the day. There are common areas and wide windowed classrooms which offer constant communication amongst children and teachers with nature forming a big part of it.

These classes dismiss the traditional education environment of constantly teaching behind closed doors with the information only delivered within four enclosed walls. This leaves limited room to find the deeper meaning to things without allowing for experimentation and exploration within nature, which is so vital to us.

Ütopya is built on 5,000 square meters of land in Çekmeköy Istanbul, providing an expansive garden and natural learning environment which were designed to cater for the specific needs of children.

Ütopya has always offered outdoor learning opportunities to our children. It has been designed with children’s development and learning in mind. It is also perfect for physical activities, by keeping the connection between the right and the left sides of the brain, with the added benefits of an abundance of fresh air, improving the quality of learning immensely.

Outdoor Education is not only encouraged and implemented within the school grounds, but also outside of them by providing school trips, forest walks, observation days out and projects being conducted in different places/environments. When the pandemic hit globally, the only difference for us was the organization of the outdoor classrooms and incorporating sinks into gardens, providing easy accessibility to wash hands more frequently.

When the Covid 19 pandemic hit globally, we only had to make a few adjustments to the organization of the outdoor classrooms by incorporating outdoor sinks, thereby providing easy accessibility to wash hands more frequently.

The Benefits:

There are so many different meaningful life skills to be learned as well as activities and experiences for the children.

Our children are so good at being creative, solving problems, adaptation and finding solutions while in the garden surrounded by nature.

We are very fortunate to have a large garden that can accommodate our outdoor education.

The education programs continue normally and in accordance with the Ütopya curriculums without any complications. It took us a while to get used to, adjusting and adapting to the new outdoor learning ways, but we are so proud and happy to have the space to be able to incorporate outdoor classes into our education program during these times.