Our Little Red Wagons

This is a love story. A love story about wagons.

We don’t begin our story about our outdoor school with anything about acres or acreage. Our school is located on a city lot measured in feet, not acres. But we are very much a nature-based, outdoor school showing that it is possible. That said, the neighborhood is vast and wide with lovely markings and features that the children learn to identify right away, including crosswalks, curbs, and sidewalks.

While excursions into the urban green corridors, alleyways, and sidewalk edges were a feature prior to 2021, it was that year that we borrowed the cues, “Traveling Light” and “Traveling Heavy” to better prepare the children, parents, and teachers for their class sessions out and about. This became so efficient that once the children see the Journey Doll (ask if you want to know more) they will ask what kind of travel it will be that day.

Traveling heavy means that the wagon will accompany us.

Now talk to any forest school or nature-based teacher and they’ll tell you how they pack in and out of wherever they are going. Tune in because you will always learn something new.

That said, the tried and true to the program and where it is located will win the day.

So, the primary question to ask is, “What are you trying to move?”

In our case, sometimes — even a lot of times — we aren’t moving anything noteworthy in the wagons. The wagons we use and stand by (for us and for our program) are the Town & Country Radio Flyer Wagons. Other times, we have to move a lot of stuff in the wagons. Sometimes, but rarely, a child or two children will ride in a wagon.

Transporting children isn’t our focus, rather it is children being able to pull and push the wagon themselves.

In fact, I would say that children pulling and pushing the wagon (or wagons) is a primary focus of our social-emotional and physical development goals!

But children pulling that Little Red wagon? Pushing the wagon? Guiding the wagon? Pulling the wagon up a hill or down a hill?

All of that involves overcoming gravity, friction, and the wagon's weight, while pulling it down a hill primarily involves overcoming friction. None of that discovery is possible if children are not given the autonomy and trust of being in charge of the wagon.

And no other wagon compares with the red wagon’s stability, the predictability, and solid trustworthy weight. Its painted wood, knobby tires and long metal handle, offering limited, but also exactly right, maneuverability makes this a forever item.

This particular year a single child NEEDED to be completely in charge of the wagon. The other children knew this and made space for this need. THAT is belonging. THAT is celebration. THAT is love.

Parents bought our two red wagons way back in 2015 and one has been in constant use. We built and rolled out the second one in 2022. The shininess of the “new” one, long stored in a box, calls a gentle, younger sisterly hello to the scraped, but still solid, still reliable elder sister. She stands and goes, goes, goes on her four tires with a little help here and there with bungee cords and straps. She is always the first loaded and the first to signal that we will be traveling heavy that day.