Tag: Nature

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Get Outside: Learning with Endless Benefits

Written by: Emily (Emma) Edgren

THE FACTS

Gabriela Bento and Gisela Dias (2017) researched the importance of outdoor play for young children’s healthy development. They found that there are many benefits to cognitive and physical development that come from outdoor play. The influence of time and space in play experiences in a child’s daily routines fulfills the needs that most children who spend the majority of their time inside aren’t getting.

Contact with the outdoor environment offers a wide variety of unique experiences to capture children’s attention and interest. With the use of items such as sticks, rocks, flowers, dirt, water, and leaves, children can expand their curiosity and their drive to learn. These materials are more meaningful than the limited options commercial toys offer. These are open-ended material that evoke the use of children’s imaginations. Through outdoor play there is a sense of discovery and adventure. Their exploration is driven by fascination and this is where meaningful learning happens while creating a connection with their environment. This is unlike a traditional classroom setting. When children engage in outdoor play, their bodies become their learning tool (Bento & Dias, 2017).

There is an important factor when it comes to risk. Adults can become overwhelmed and consumed with the worry that something bad will happen to their child when they are outside. This is a n0-brainer; parents want the absolute best for their children. The piece of information that they are missing is how important the concept of risk is to the development of their child. The outdoor environment opens the door, wide open for special opportunities; opportunities for children to exceed their personal limits. These are moments of exploration, climbing, jumping, or using a new tool. This type of play, though risky, promotes the learning of important skills; skills like, persistence, entrepreneurship, self-knowledge, and problem-solving (Bento & Dias, 2017). Even more importantly children will experience moments of failure and success in the outdoor environment.

The type of socialization that happens out in nature is different too. The types of connections between children and adults (or peers) is different compared to a classroom setting. Adults are able to gain a deeper understanding of children through organic observation. The open and unpredictable environment that the outdoors provides for the children, allows for a more meaningful connection between children. Children become the teachers and learners in the outdoor setting. In order to accomplish tasks, children will work together on a joint goal and combine their skills to accomplish different tasks (Bento & Dias, 2017).  The outdoor environment also creates an environment where children can choose whether or not they want to participate in play with a group of peers or go off on their own and explore. The space is more open and children won’t be in such a confined space where children run into each other often in the classroom. Not to mention a big win of playing outside strengthens children’s immune systems! Who doesn’t want a stronger immune system?

THE GOALS

The first goal for cognitive development based on the book The Creative Curriculum for Preschool by Diane Dodge, Laura Colker, and Cate Heroman (2008) is learning and problem solving. This is when a child is purposeful about getting information and using the information that they have gathered. This happens through observing events around them, asking questions, making predictions, and testing possible solutions (Dodge, Colker, & Heroman, 2008). This goal can be easily met through outdoor play. Through outdoor play children are gathering so much information about their surroundings while making judgements and predictions on the world around them. They are observing what events happen in nature and asking questions to further their cognitive skills.

The next cognitive goal is thinking logically: Gathering and making sense of information by comparing, contrasting, sorting, classifying, counting, and recognizing patterns (Dodge, Colker, & Heroman. 2008). This goal is another one of the goals that can be easily met and worked on through outdoor play. Children are exploring and gathering up items that they find outside. This can allow for a learning opportunity to take a look at the objects and compare the objects by classifying them, sorting them, and recognizing patterns if there are any. Maybe children even begin to compare and contrast which stick is the biggest, or which rock is the heaviest. Either way children are expanding the way they think and gaining new skills through this outdoor play.

The last goal for cognitive development is representing and thinking symbolically. This happens when children use objects in unique ways and portray the world through charts or pictures. This allows children to really use their imaginations and explore abstract ideas (Dodge, Colker, & Heroman, 2008).  As mentioned above, objects and items that can be found in the outdoor environment are open-ended materials. Open ended materials are materials that can be used for anything and everything. This is where a child can really expand their imagination and creativity. They can also use these objects in new and unique ways while gaining a new perspective on the world around them.

For physical development there are two goals: Fine motor skill development and gross motor skill development. For achieving gross motor control children need to move their large muscles in the body, especially the arms and legs consciously and deliberately. Gross motor control also involves balance, stability, running, jumping, hopping, galloping, and skipping. Other skills include throwing, kicking, and catching as well (Dodge, Colker, & Heroman, 2008). There is no doubt that the development of these skills can be supported through outdoor play. Jumping from rock to rock, climbing trees, running around with your friends, and balancing on top of rocks. Throwing a ball to your friend. Lifting up a rock to look for a bug. These are all gross motor developing activities that take place in an outdoor setting. The outdoor setting is very important to the gross motor development of a child.

Fine motor skills are achieved by using and coordinating the small muscles in the hands and wrists with dexterity. The development of these small muscles helps with the ability to perform self help skills and their abilities to manipulate small objects and tools (Dodge, Colker, & Heroman, 2008). This can be done through play outdoors. By working on zipping a jacket to go outside and tying their shoes. Using small tools to do garden work like a hand shovel. Even using the small muscles in their hands to pick up a tiny bug that they found will work on their fine motor skills.

THE OUTDOOR ADVENTURE

For this week’s activity we are going to focus on outdoor play. Keep it simple families. Take a walk around the neighborhood, the park, or your backyard. Let your child’s creativity and interests lead the way through their exploration of the outdoors. Along the way collect items that spark the interest of the child and that they are interested in exploring further. Once the walk is complete, work on some cognitive skills through comparing items, contrasting items, and sorting your items that you found. In addition, work on language development through asking open-ended questions that allow your child to describe what they see, what they feel, and why they picked it up. The question possibilities are endless and will only take their learning to the next level.

Now go get outside and have fun!!

References

Bento, G. & Dias, G. (2017). The importance of outdoor play for young children’s healthy development. Porto Biomedical Journal, 2(5), 157 – 160. doi: 10.1016/j.pbj.2017.03.003

Dodge, D. T., Colker, L. J., & Heroman, C. (2008). The creative curriculum for preschool. Washington, DC: Teaching Strategies.

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Creating Curiosity in Nature

Written by: Lauryn Baily

Nature gifts children; it creates an environment that values respect, compassion, and curiosity.  These characteristics learned in nature teach children how to treat others and respect the environment around them. Nature doesn’t require structure in order to create learning opportunities; learning in nature can be done during a walk to the store, watching leaves from a window, or wherever else your child shares a curiosity with (Goldstein, Famularo & Kynn, 2018). Research has shown young children who are connected to nature, even within urban environments, have stronger emotional resilience, experience less stress, are less likely to become hyperactive, and possess stronger social skills (Flouri, Midouhas & Joshi, 2014). When these spontaneous moments occur, and time allows, asking questions is a great way to foster your child’s wonder and learning further to observe, generate questions, conduct experiments, connect science with the real world and build their understandings of everyday concepts (Goldstein et al., 2018).

 The following questions can connect your child to nature as well as extend their curiosity during everyday routines:

  • What are you seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling?
  • How can you change this? How can you make this move? 
  • What animals or bugs live here?
  • What can you see from here?
  • Does this plant (tree, animal or bug) look similar to that plant (tree, animal or bug)?
  • Is this older, younger, bigger, smaller than this?
  • How does this affect us? (Dodge et al., 2008)

Questions should promote children to ask why, explore cause and effect, compare/measure/classify and learn sequences in nature (Dodge et al., 2008).

An activity that establishes time for learning and opportunity, while involving these questions, can be done through nature collection at a park, on a trail, on a neighborhood walk, in your backyard or in a forested area. Establish boundaries with your child about what items to search for and where to search. Discuss what it means for plants to be alive. Encourage thoughts about where wildflowers are growing. This may be somewhere you can simply observe, rather than picking the growing plant.

Moss is also something that while is alive on trees, can be found dried around tree stumps. Large rocks and fallen trees can be homes to small critters. Bringing varied items together such as pine cones, pine needles, dried moss, leaves, grass and rocks helps children to “explore the properties of the world around them, notice changes and make predictions” as they are learning about the earth and the environment (Dodge et al., 2008, p. 145). Have your child record their discoveries. Recording child’s discoveries, serves as a connection to literacy. Perhaps, create a graph that records how many items are a certain color, a certain property, shape or texture (Dodge et al., 2008). Following below is an outline of specific learning objectives supported in this nature collection activity.

Respect and care for environment and materials

Talking about how we take care of the world around us is important. As discussed before, plants that are alive can create an opportunity to talk with your child about respecting and caring for delicate parts of our environment and conversation about how we must leave no trace so others after us can enjoy beauty as we did. Teaching respect for our natural environment and asking how we are affected by the environment around us, leads to a deeper understanding and responsibility of nature (Dodge et al., 2008).

Explore cause and effect

Simply noticing characteristics creates curiosity, leading to questions such as “what will happen if?” and developing experiments (Dodge et al., 2008). Families can promote this objective by asking their children:

  • What happens if you pick this up? Turn it over?
  • What did you notice?
  • How can this change?

Classify, compare, or measure

This is a great time to incorporate a recording method.  You may encourage creating a graph, a narrative record of what your child has noticed, or allow your child to record their findings using their own creativity. Sorting objects will help support children as they are learning patterns and relationships (Dodge et al., 2008).

  • Sort objects by one or multiple properties such as; size, shape, color or texture.
  • Ask questions such as:
    • What is different between these two leaves?
    • Which object is bigger, smaller, smooth, rough or sharp?
    • How many different colors/sizes/shapes do we have?

Overall, connection to nature is not only a learning experience for children, but a huge component to supporting their overall well-being (Flouri et al., 2014). Learning and playing in nature creates connection of your child’s personal interest and enjoyment. More playing equates to discovering new ways of engaging in nature. Relaxing and enjoying unstructured time together, can be the most valuable experience of all.

References

Dodge, D. T., Colker, L. J., & Heroman, C. (2003). The creative curriculum for preschool. Washington, DC: Teaching Strategies.

Flouri, E., Midouhas, E., & Joshi, H. (2014). The role of urban neighborhood green space in children’s emotional and behavioral resilience. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 40, 179–186. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2014.06.007

Goldstein, M., Famularo, L., & Kynn, J. (2018, November). From Puddles to Pigeons: Learning about Nature in Cities. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/nov2018/learning-about-nature-cities

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Mother Nature Knows Best: The Sensory-Rich Environment

Written by: Katibelle Dicker (Spring 2020)

If you are a caretaker of young children you are likely familiar with the popular trend of making slime and other DIY sensory activities. This may be in part due to the reported increase in concerns of children displaying sensory processing issues coming from parents and other professionals in the pediatric field (Hanscom, 2014). While at-home sensory activities are engaging and beneficial play for children, they can be costly, and time-consuming to put together. There is another option, a no-cost, even greater developmentally rich, and family-friendly alternative, and that is mother nature.


The Importance of Sensory Exposure on Early Childhood Development


When children enter the world, they begin trying to make sense of their environment, this is done through input to their five senses; sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Sensory play also includes balance and bodily awareness or movement. Sensory play is a vital part of early childhood development because it builds nerve connections that act as pathways of communication in the brain, refines sensory thresholds, and improves physical, cognitive, social-emotional, and language development (Goodstart, 2016).

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)


More recently, professionals in early childcare settings have noticed an increase in sensory processing issues amongst children. Hanscom (2014) mentioned in her blog:


According to many teachers, children are frequently falling out of their seats in school, running into walls, tripping over their own feet, and unable to pay attention. School administrators are complaining that kids are getting more aggressive on the playgrounds… (para 5)


When children have SPD they may struggle to gauge their strength potentially turning harmless play into misinterpreted acts of aggression, experience underresponsiveness to touch which may cause a child to fall from their seat, or run into a wall, or become increasingly sensitive to sensory stimuli such as a button on their pants, which may become overly distracting from any form of learning (Berk & Meyers, 2016).

Ditching Sensory Bins and Getting Children Outside


Many parents and early childhood professionals have been proactive towards this issue by encouraging sensory play at home, in the classrooms, and inside the clinics. Typical sensory play involves shaving cream, kinetic sand, textured balance beams, tables filled with assorted materials, etc., but often overlooked is the most sensory-rich environment that we have to offer… the outdoors! While there are plenty of ways to mimic sensory experiences inside the home, none of them comes close to the amount of sensory input that is provided in nature. The outdoors are filled with colors of all shades, objects of varying textures, sounds of different wildlife, smells of plants and trees, and more that simply cannot be replicated indoors.

Getting Families Involved


For the families of young children, there is a great opportunity and need to bring children out into nature to explore and investigate the world around them. Taking children camping to explore the different tactile objects such as pine cones, or fallen leaves around the campsite while smelling the juniper trees and hearing the birds chirp is a great sensory experience for a little one, not to mention an enjoyable getaway for the whole family. Having children helping out in the garden in the backyard gives them visual input from the bright colored flowers, acoustic input from the sounds of the lawnmower, and tactile input from the different potting soils used.


Nature can be exceedingly beneficial when it comes to sensory development, but there are also plenty of additional developmental areas that can be addressed and improved outdoors. By having a child go for a hike they are working on their cognitive development using problem-solving skills to assess which rock is stable enough to walk on and which rock looks dangerous, they are working on their physical development by balancing on narrowing paths or safely moving from one side of a stream to the other (Hanscom, 2014). Social-emotional skills are developed as the child shows a sense of independence and ability to adapt to a new environment, and language development increases as children identify unfamiliar objects and wildlife, expanding their vocabulary (Dodge, Colker & Heroman, 2008).


In addition to all that developmental growth, nature provides a great opportunity to teach children to engage in mindfulness, focusing on the present with a lack of judgment (Goodstart, 2016). Other benefits to outdoor play are the money that will be saved on Elmer’s glue and baking soda, healthy outdoor habits that children will develop early on, as well as the opportunity for positive interactions between the familial unit during family-friendly activities.


Outdoor play provides a multitude of sensory-rich experiences, a crucial aspect to each area of early childhood development, and with the increasing number of children presenting signs of SPD, it is time to step outside and allow mother nature to step in.

References


Berk, L. E., & Meyers, A. B. (2016). Infants and children: Prenatal through middle childhood (8th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall.


Dodge, D. T., Colker, L. J., & Heroman, C. (2008). The creative curriculum for preschool: College edition. Washington, D.C.: Teaching Strategies


Goodstart Early Learning. (2016). Exploring the benefits of sensory play. Retrieved from
https://www.goodstart.org.au/news-and-advice/october-2016/exploring-the-benefits-of-sensory-play


Hanscom, A. (2014). NATURE IS THE ULTIMATE SENSORY EXPERIENCE: A Pediatric Occupational Therapist Makes the Case for Nature Therapy. Retrieved from
https://www.childrenandnature.org/2014/05/12/nature-is-the-ultimate-sensory-experience-pediatric-occupational-therapist-makes-the-case-for-nature-therapy/