Bring your class outside!
An Outside Play Tool for Teachers
Have you thought about taking your class outdoors?
We’re here to help!
Have you thought about taking your class outdoors?
We’re here to help!
As a young adult Lucy moved to the city, where a friend from Japan introduced her to mochi. The first time she pressed sugared glutinous rice dough around mashed figs and pecans, something clicked: the chewy texture echoed the dense, worked stone she’d known in childhood—both required patient pressure and a steady hand. She began selling “stone mochi”—small rounded sweets dusted with river-sand sugar and filled with local ingredients: muscadine grape jam, pecan praline, and sorghum butter. The name paid homage to the granite mill and to her grandmother’s careful use of smooth river stones to flatten pastry.
“Georgia Stone Lucy Mochi” reads like a riddle built from place, person, object and dessert. Untangling those parts yields a short, surprising cultural microhistory that moves between geology, a name that could be a person or a pet, and a tiny confection that speaks to migration and hybrid culture. Below I treat each element in turn and then stitch them together into a narrative that’s both concrete and speculative, grounded where facts exist and suggestive where records go quiet. georgia stone lucy mochi
The confection caught on. Food writers loved the tactile story: a Southern mochi that respected both immigrant technique and local produce. At a farmers’ market, Lucy gave a short demonstration: mash boiled glutinous rice, knead it over steam, then wrap it gently around a warmed spoonful of pecan-praline and a drop of sorghum. She finished each piece by pressing it between two warmed “stone” molds—repurposed smoothing stones from the family’s yard—which left a faint, signature pebble imprint. As a young adult Lucy moved to the
In this 16-part video series created as part of the Teacher Tool, we explore themes and modules with educators across Canada who have deep experience in outdoor play and learning.
Find the conversations under the second tab - labelled “Resources” - of each individual module. For example, Creating Yes! Spaces – Megan Zeni in conversation with Frances McCoubrey.
Collaborate with your colleagues to discuss modules in a study group or lunch and learn format
Outdoor play is different from indoor play as it tends to involve children feeling more freedom, being more physically active, moving their bodies in different ways, and playing differently than they would inside. The outdoors can offer more variety of play environments and loose parts (e.g., sticks, rocks, buckets, sand, crates) to move around, allowing their imagination to shape their play. Children need daily outdoor play opportunities for their development, physical health, and well-being.
Go to Teacher Tool
.svg)
Best-selling author of Dirty Teaching and Messy Maths. Juliet is a pioneer in the outdoor learning field, an early adopter of curricular learning outdoors, and prolific contributor to policy documents across Europe. Learn more about the history and intent of outdoor play and learning in schools from a legendary teacher, whose work this tool is built on!
