Making outdoor equipment easily accessible, as you would do indoors, enables children to have greater choice and control over what they do during their time spent outside. How to do this is the key focus of this article.
KEY 5: STORAGE AND ORGANISATION
- There is ample storage outdoors for resources, equipment and bikes.
- Storage and organisation make access to equipment safe and straightforward.
- Storage is organised with the intention that children can independently choose and access resources (continuous provision).
- Resources are clearly presented and arranged to make it easy for children to use and return them.
- Mobile containers make it easy to move resources to wherever they are needed.
- Children are involved in tidying.
WHY IS THIS ISSUE KEY TO UNLOCKING THE OUTDOORS?
Ample, well-arranged storage outdoors is critical to effective and frequent use of the outdoors as a learning environment. This is perhaps the easiest Key to start with, and the one that can make the most immediate difference.
So often, sheds are out of the way, or not even in the outdoor space, meaning that resources must be carried to and fro by practitioners – and are therefore less used than they might be. Often too, outdoor sheds are partly filled with excess indoor equipment, taking up valuable space and making the storage difficult to use.
Sheds that double up as play houses also create problems, since everything must come out and be put back at the end of the day.
Having enough storage so that resources can be kept organised, manageable and available for use, without being piled up or put in front of others, is an important first step in making the overall environment function well. It must be easy to see all of what is there, and safe and straightforward to bring them out for use. More shelves with less on them make for easier use.
Minimising the quantity of stuff you keep to resources that have high play value and are popular and well used by the children will free up lots of space, so that you can increase the abundance of good resources that earn their keep.
WHAT DO WE NEED TO BE WORKING ON?
This Key involves reviewing what storage you have in the outdoor area, where it is located and how straightforward it is to use. Having dedicated storage is crucial – that means these sheds are only used for storing the equipment and resources that support learning through play outdoors and making them as accessible as possible for daily use.
As well as rationalising what you already have, investing in more storage can make a big difference. Having plenty of room inside for good visibility and space to manipulate containers makes them much easier to find and safer to get out and back in.
Consider where the storage is in relation to where it is wanted for use. Having several smaller sheds and open shelving or bins, rather than one big centralised storage point, allows relevant resources to be kept nearer to where they are wanted as well as simplifying the range of contents. In particular, keeping wheeled toys separately to other equipment can greatly improve how and when they are used: it is then possible for children to select what they want to use by themselves. When resources are organised into suitable mobile containers, taking them to different places outside will prompt further uses and discoveries.
Most importantly, the core idea of this Key is that storage and organisation outdoors should operate as continuous provision, enabling and supporting children to self-select just as they do indoors. Resources are therefore organised with the intention that children can independently choose and access them according to their own ongoing purposes, rather than being predetermined by adults.
For this to happen well, the organisation must make sense to the children, they must be able to see what is there and they need to be able to find, remove and carry the containers holding the resources to where they want to use them. When children are involved in organisation, tidying up and caring for equipment, what is available comes to mind during play, they know where to get things from and are more likely and able to help tidy up. Children’s involvement in these processes should be understood as an educationally valuable aspect of outdoor learning.
HOW TO MAKE A START AT DEVELOPING PROVISION AND PRACTICE
Things to consider, discuss and evaluate
- Are your resources easy to access, use and store?
- Is there enough storage for bikes and equipment, and is it straightforward and safe to use?
- Is everyone able to get what they need when they want it and is it easy for them to access and use?
- Can the children independently choose and use your resources as continuous provision?
- Are resources well organised and presented so that it is easy to find and put things away?
- Is it easy to move containers to where they are needed and used?
- Are children involved in managing resources and keeping things tidy?
Things to explore and read
- Nature Play at Home: Creating outdoor spaces that connect children with the natural worldby Nancy Striniste (Timber Press, 2019).
- The Reception Year in Action: A month-by-month guide to success in the classroom by Anna Ephgrave (2nd edn, Routledge, 2012).
- Sheds & Storage from Muddy Faces: https://bit.ly/37Ialx1
- Outdoor Trolleys from TTS: https://bit.ly/36nHGgv
Things to do
- Empty your shed completely and rigorously sort out, simplify and reduce the contents.
- The extra room in the storage can now be harnessed to make more shelving and fit more suitable containers, including mobile ones. Work with the children to decide what containers to use, what to put in them and how to arrange them inside the shed.
- Consider bringing in new storage so that relevant equipment can be provided near to where it is wanted.
CASE STUDY: sorting Quackers’ storage of resources
‘Despite our best efforts to ensure that our small shed was well enough organised to allow safe access for children and staff, it moved from a state of order to disorder,’ says Menna Godfrey, owner and pedagogical lead at Quackers in York.
‘We tried many solutions to try to overcome this: we arranged things carefully and photographed the way that things should be; we sorted and resorted. But every time, as term progressed, the chaos returned and resources disappeared into the back of the shed never to be seen again! All this was the work of the adult and our aim of accessible storage providing choice, independence and responsibility to our children seemed to slip further and further from our grasp.
‘Taking a step back, we had to ask whether we (or the children) needed all the things that we were trying to store in the shed. This led to an audit of play possibilities for the resources, and the disposal of resources that were not working hard enough and so did not earn a place in the new order of things. We then removed the shed and replaced it with some open shelving (we are fortunate to be able to store resources safely outside).
‘The outcome of this is a system that empowers children to access many resources independently and to see all of the available resources, enabling them to ask (verbally or by gestures) for the items they need for their play.’
- Professor Jan White is author of several books on outdoor provision and practice and co-director of specialist training company Outdoors Thinking