Recognition of the importance of play outdoors is a key part of the Early Years Foundation Stage, but practice can vary greatly, reflecting different understandings of the value of the outdoors in children's learning. So, why is it important for children to have long periods of uninterrupted time outside?
Outdoors is a unique environment providing opportunities for learning that are not available indoors. It offers space to move and a greater degree of freedom to try things out, to explore, investigate, imagine and create.
Children have more control outside, and they can shape the environment and transform it, rather than merely respond to it. Resources can be moved and combined, and those such as construction and water play, traditionally kept apart, can be brought together, offering new and challenging possibilities.
Outdoors is a dynamic environment which is always changing in seemingly unpredictable ways. Puddles appear and disappear, clouds move across the sky, slugs and snails emerge after rain, water becomes ice, and the whole space is transformed on a foggy day.
The outdoors can offer a rich landscape of sensory experiences that stimulates the whole body - the dank, musty smell of autumn leaves, the gentle rustle of wind through bamboo, the cold viscous feel of fresh mud, for example.
It is the sharp contrast in sensory experience that can offer the sudden burst of energy often associated with going outdoors and the sense of freedom from the more dulling effects of the indoors.
CONTACT WITH NATURE
Play outdoors allows children to engage with the natural world. Children may see features of nature in parks, gardens, tubs and pots, but they rarely have the opportunity to engage with them and experience the beauty and diversity of the natural world for themselves.
Research in the US has identified that many young people who have not experienced nature show disgust and revulsion at living things and natural processes. If children are to take responsibility for nature and to see their own place within the natural world, then they have to experience it first hand.
MOVEMENT
Outdoors, children can engage in more exuberant play, involving a much wider variety of large muscle movements, than they can indoors. Children can leap, roll, chase, dodge, slide, throw, pedal, push and pull.
Daily bouts of vigorous physical play are essential for growing bones and muscles, and have long-term effects on health, endurance and skill. There is evidence that movement play, such as sliding, rolling and swinging, is important in developing body and spatial awareness. Limited opportunities for such play can lead to poor co-ordination, attention problems and learning difficulties in such things as reading, telling the time, riding a bike and so on.
Play is a powerful motivator for movement. Children control the play. They decide the pace, duration and degree of challenge. This is different from more formal exercise or gym classes where children respond to adult direction and timing. As concern grows about declining physical fitness and obesity, it is important that we expand the opportunities for challenging play outdoors, rather than introduce indoor exercise classes. Movement is part of children's very being, and it is play and exploration, not 'keeping fit', that motivate children to move and learn.
Movement is also vital for children's developing minds. Many key mathematical and scientific concepts, such as height, distance, speed, energy, gradient and gravity, can only be fully experienced outdoors. Children need to experience these concepts with their whole bodies and in many different contexts in order to develop rich conceptual understanding.
Such experiences are especially important for children with disabilities who may be denied such opportunities in other spheres of their lives. Current research in the neurosciences is also confirming the importance of movement in boosting brain function and improving mood, as well as increasing learning.
MAKE-BELIEVE
Many of children's imaginative play themes involve movement, such as going on holiday, moving house, delivering things, putting out fires, chasing, capturing and rescuing. Outdoors can inspire make-believe as the open-endedness of the environment allows more scope for imaginative transformations.
Rogers and Evans (2007), researching role play in reception classes, found that play outdoors was more sustained and complex than play indoors. Significantly, boys could sustain play themes outdoors with less interruption and fewer conflicts with adults. Boys are often more willing to engage with the wider curriculum outdoors, and would rather make props or write notices for their play outdoors than sit at a table inside.
ALL AREAS OF LEARNING
All areas of learning can be experienced outdoors. Observing insects under logs, seeing how long the ice takes to melt, watering the garden with a hose and digging for ancient treasure are just some examples of play. However, they are also aspects of scientific, mathematical, creative, technological and literacy learning. It is up to the adults to see the potential learning in play and to extend it, not to teach through play or take it over for narrow curriculum outcomes.
Children are increasingly denied access to play outdoors. Traffic, parental fears, lack of garden space and fewer public areas for children mean they spend longer indoors or strapped in to cars or buggies.
This makes it even more important that early years settings offer rich, challenging play environments.
- Helen Tovey is principal lecturer, Early Childhood Studies, at Roehampton University
DESIGNING AND RESOURCING OUTDOOR PLAY SPACES
Where do we start when designing or redesigning outdoor play areas? Frequently the process begins with practitioners leafing through equipment catalogues with a 'let's have one of those' attitude. However, this is wrong. You must first ask: What do I want for children, and what do children want for their play?
Actively listening to children's ideas and feelings about their space and researching how children use space offer a sound basis for development. There is considerable evidence that the following features contribute to rich, challenging play environments.
Natural environments
Given a choice, children prefer to play in natural environments where bushes, trees and plants are an integral part of the play space. Natural materials offer an endless variety of play potential: bushes can be used as camps or dens; fallen tree trunks for balancing or for transformation into play vehicles. Grassy spaces and mounds provide ideal places for infants to crawl, roll and tumble. Research in Norway indicates that children who play in natural environments where there is rough and uneven terrain have improved physical development compared with those playing in a more conventional play area. So, varieties of heights and surfaces, things to crawl or climb over, under and through, are important. Wild areas with long grass and creepers can offer exciting play opportunities.
Spaces for exploration and investigation
A provocative, enabling environment invites curiosity and exploration where children will find and pursue their own challenges and problems to solve. Sand, water, small fountains, guttering and water wheels can provide endless opportunities for problem-solving. Areas for digging and planting, small ponds, and logs and stones for habitats for minibeasts, can offer experience of change.
Open-ended resources
Play areas are often filled with plastic replica materials such as cars, lawn mowers, shopping trolleys, petrol pumps and little houses. But such materials offer limited play value because their features define their use. More open-ended play materials, such as boxes, barrels, steps, crates, blankets, tyres, ladders, pipes and tubes, can be transformed by children's imaginations, offering more opportunities for creativity and requiring more negotiation and collaboration.
Enclosed as well as open spaces
Observations of children show that they tend to spend much longer in small enclosed areas than in large open ones. Bushes, dens, small wooden houses and enclosed areas made with milk crates, boxes and blankets can create valuable spaces for imagination, as well as intimate spaces for talk and friendship and private spaces to be alone.
Flexible rather than fixed areas
Sometimes play space can be overdesigned and overfilled with fixed equipment, leaving little that the children can actually change. Some spaces, including sand pits, mounds, gardens, and digging and musical areas, will be fixed, but flexible use of space allows the area to be changed according to children's play interests.
Connected spaces
Making connections is central to children's learning, so planning link and flow between different areas is important. Pathways, stepping stones, bridges and board walks can all invite children to move into new areas and make important cognitive connections between them.
Responsive adults
However, it is not just the space and resources that make a rich and challenging play area, it is also the time that is available for play and the adults and children who play there. Adults who enjoy being outside, are excited by changes in the environment, are sensitively involved in supporting children's play without dominating it, and are responsive to emerging interests and knowledgeable about the aspects of children's play, are arguably the richest resource of all.
RISK, SAFETY AND CHALLENGE OUTDOORS
Margaret McMillan argued that children should play 'bravely and adventurously ... in a provocative environment where new chances are possible' (McMillan 1930:78). However, opportunities for adventurous play can be severely limited by anxieties about children's safety.
Yet if children are going to develop the skills to be safe, then they need some exposure to risk and to experiences that will help them learn to assess and manage risks themselves.
Risk-taking also needs to be viewed as an integral part of children's play (such as going headfirst down a slide) and as an important learning disposition because:
- it allows children to push boundaries and be willing to try something new
- it is linked to emotional wellbeing and mental health, and
- it contributes to children's feelings of competence and helps them shape a more realistic understanding of their own limits.
We need then to look for opportunities where children can gain confidence and skills, and experience excitement, from activities that induce a feeling of being 'on the edge', where a combination of fear and enjoyment generates exhilaration and a sense of achievement. Essential too is:
- discussing risk and safety as a team
- looking critically at outdoor play areas and identifying the potential for all children
- promoting appropriate risk-taking in play, and
- communicating its importance to parents.
HAVE YOU APPLIED?
Early years providers are securing generous funding under the Early Years Capital Grant to upgrade their outdoor provision - a priority under the scheme. In all, the grant aims to:
- improve the quality of the learning environment
- provide access to all children, including disabled children, and
- enable PVI settings to deliver the extended free entitlement.
Funding allocations under the scheme (2008-2011) total £642m and the Government has made clear that it expects most of the money to be 'used to improve the quality of the environment in PVI early years and childcare settings'. The threshold is £2,500.
For more information, contact your local authority and see 'Watch this space' (Nursery World, 16 October 2008).
FURTHER INFORMATION
- Managing Risk in Play Provision by David Ball, Tim Gill and Bernard Spiegal (DCSF)
- No fear: Growing up in a risk-averse society by Tim Gill (London Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation)
- The Nursery School by Margaret McMillan (Dent)
- Places for Play: Exhibition Photographs to inspire a creative approach to outdoor learning. www.freeplaynetwork.org.uk
- Playing Outdoors: Spaces and Places, Risk and Challenge by Helen Tovey (Maidenhead: Open University Press)