Fremont thinking outside the classroom

The excited children ran through the woods, pausing to collect twigs, tall grass, beautiful flowers and colored leaves, all in anticipation of building fairy houses.

Dean Hanson, 7, stopped as a grasshopper jumped from the long grass to land on his shoulder. Each looked at the other, sharing a moment in nature.

In effort to both encourage creativity and spend some time outdoors, Fremont Elementary School second-graders built fairy houses recently in the Fremont Outdoor Learning Environment, located on 40 acres behind the Mundelein school.

Art teacher Jenifer Nollin got the idea for the project after reading a book, "Fairy Houses ... Everywhere" by Barry and Tracy Kane, this past summer.

"In New England for the past couple of decades, they have been building fairy houses out in the woods, both parents and children, " explained Nollin. "There are two rules. You can't harm any living things and everything has to be natural. Nothing artificial."

The students embraced the project.

"I made a fairy house with leaves on top of it and a wood chip for a door step, " said an excited Shea Flanagan, 7. "It is a mansion for tiny fairies. I could build whatever I wanted and nobody stopped me. It was fun."

As Nollin walked inside the school along the hallway, she stopped and peered out the window. There in the courtyard stood a small, wooden fairy house.

"They have been popping up everywhere," she said, smiling.