Getting outdoors often can benefit babies, toddlers and practitioners alike. However excellent your indoor environment may be, under-threes need a change of scene with opportunities for movement and lively play in your garden. Fortunately, the potential of the outdoors for learning and enjoyment for children is also currently enjoying a revival in early years practice.
0-12 months
Babies love to watch and listen as well as move about to the best of their ability. They benefit from time out in the fresh air, protected as appropriate for the weather, against chill or heat. Outside, babies will enjoy using all their senses to listen to a new range of sounds and will indulge in what can be seen from the vantage point of a comfortable rug or your lap. As they become more mobile, even a short crawl or a tottering walk outside brings exciting sights and feels to an older baby.
In the garden of a nursery or family home, babies who cannot yet move independently will enjoy watching the games of toddlers and older children.
Those children in their turn often support babies' learning by their willingness to bring items of interest or to perform physical antics that make the babies laugh.
1-2 years
You will need to keep a watchful eye and ear, but your outdoor space should be safe enough for toddlers to move out of arms' reach and access the outdoor space independently. Toddlers learn by practising their skills, negotiating gentle slopes and using outdoor equipment. You will observe relaxed toddlers, who have space and time outdoors, as they clamber slowly up a low-level climbing frame or into a seated rocker. They are confident that a beseeching cry will bring an adult with a steadying hand or rescuing arms.
Your friendly supervision should ensure that toddlers do not eat sand, earth or plants. But otherwise, young children clean up very well and they learn steadily what it is all right to touch and poke. Toddlers are then able to discover and rediscover the interests within their own outdoor space.
2-3 years
Young children show great interest in what happens in the garden: spotting flowers, watching birds and squirrels and locating minibeasts under stones.
They show powers of recall and concentration and may be keen collectors of outdoor treasures, some of which they may like displayed indoors.
Two-year-olds want to be part of simple garden maintenance such as watering and trundling around stones or weeds in their wheelbarrows to other parts of the garden. They show pride in the joint enterprise, as well as understanding more about taking care of plants. Such activities can lead two-year-olds to ask questions and offer comments. They start to make connections between what they see outside and what is in their favourite picture books.
Under-threes can build good habits of physical activity and enjoyment. They practise on bikes, climbing equipment and simple trampolines and by moving wheeled vehicles around. Watch as two-year-olds make significant efforts to get a wheeled trolley around a tight corner on the path. They start to make decisions about what they will do, how high they will climb and when they have had enough. Young children like exploration and the excitement of chase and hide in the foliage. The boundaries of your garden provide the delights of hideaways and dens, without the adult anxiety that is inevitable in open spaces like parks.
Active two-year-olds also begin to get a sense of bodily comfort or discomfort: being cold, hot or 'about right'. Outdoor experiences help children to develop their body's ability to adapt. It seems that humans can lose that ability if they are always in the same temperature-controlled environment.
Related features in Nursery World:
* Jennie Lindon, 'Fresh air and fun', 1 April 1999, and 'Walks of life', 1 July 1999
* Alice Sharp, 'What a wonderful world', 13 July 2000