In order to benefit fully from what the outdoors has to offer, children need long periods of time outside all through the year. A range of cheap and easily collected resources can provide wonderfully rich opportunities for play outdoors at any time.
Building brain and body
Construction activity holds even greater interest outdoors where there is space, freedom and lots of inspiration. Offer big resources which invite children to be inventive and energetic, collaborate and build on a big scale. There will also be plenty of practical reasons to construct, such as making cane wigwams for growing runner beans.
Resources
* Milk and bread crates * small tyres * large wooden blocks * real bricks * cardboard boxes and carpet-roll tubes * planks * log slices * branch segments * big, clean plastic containers and flower pot, * guttering and down pipes * bamboo canes (tape ends to protect eyes * broom handles * shells * pebbles * twigs * woodwork * bench * tools * safety glasses * buckets * wheelbarrow, * bikes * carts * joining materials (rope, string, masking and parcel tape, carpet tape, treasury tags, pegs) stored in a trolley or tool box * camera Books
* Once upon a tide by Tony Mitton and Selina Young (Random House Children's Books),
* The three little wolves and the big bad pig by Eugene Trivizas and Helen Oxenbury (Egmont)
Children can
* Make tiny structures with twigs and pebbles
* Work together, sharing ideas for buildings, vehicles, aqueducts, bridges and towers
* Create inner spaces, feeling private or secret
* Construct things to use, such as seating with tyres and planks
* Build obstacle courses of increasing complexity and challenge
* Load and unload building materials for transportation with carts, wheelbarrows or bikes
* Move and manipulate materials into place
* Build and rebuild trying out various materials
* Work out how to successfully connect items
* Explore the joining materials and find out which methods work best
* Make a wall with bricks and homemade 'mortar'
* Role-play construction workers or replay the DIY they have helped with at home
* Use lots of new 'building' words and phrases
* Sing songs such as 'London Bridge is falling down' and 'Peter hammers with one hammer'
* Observe details of buildings and incorporate into their own construction ideas
* Be inspired to play in the structures they have made or construct to meet a specific play idea
* Add directions and signs, such as 'Danger, hole in road'
* Capture memories of their work in photographs, drawings, plans and maps.
Jan White is a freelance consultant specialising in outdoor play in the early years. Her new book Playing and Learning Outdoors is published in June as part of Nursery World's 'Good Practice' series