This week, Kingfield’s Lake Country School is slated to take the next step in their three-year renovation plan, and breaking ground on several outdoor classrooms in the rain garden at their urban campus at the corner of 38th Street and Pleasant Avenue South, next to the Center for Performing Arts.

These classrooms (or perhaps they’re better called “class-groves?”) will be used for teaching about the natural world, said principal Paulette Zoë. Using their Dunn County, WI rural campus, Zoë said, Lake Country’s teachers have developed a slate of special lessons designed to be taught outside, in all kinds of weather.

“We’re moving toward a natural environment that can be used for play, to study nature, for students do their work outside, and for exploring a little bit,” Zoë said.

Lake Country integrates the outdoors into many aspects of its Montessori curriculum, she added, saying students do everything from winter camping to bird watching and studying sustainability. The school’s landscape architects worked with teachers to come up with five thematic areas of the garden that play to five “great lessons” about the natural environment.