Play Out

How to develop your outside space for learning and play

Learning through Landscapes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317615644
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Do you know how to manage physical risks and encourage children to go out and test their own boundaries without fear or failure?

How can you create a stimulating outdoor area that offers irresistible learning opportunities for young children?

Does your outdoor learning environment support young children's emerging life skills of confidence, perseverance, creativity, decision making and leadership

Play Out! is an inspirational, accessible and pragmatic set of resources aimed at all those involved with improving the use, design and management of outdoor spaces in early years settings. It provides a step-by-step guide for planning and implementing physical changes to outdoor environments in order to facilitate high quality learning and play experiences.

Physical and outdoor play has a major impact on the intellectual, emotional and social development of young children. Drawing on Learning through Landscapes experience in working with thousands of early years settings, this book provides the tools for settings to assess what they already have, work through what their needs are, and inspires them to take the next steps forward to make physical and practical improvements to their outside area.

Featuring downloadable resources with a comprehensive and fully adaptable audit tool, plus activities and case study resources to support your work, the handy toolkit provides:

• Step-by step guidance on project management and how to plan improvements to your space
• Tools for engaging your whole school community
• Practical activity ideas to involve children and adults
• A wide range of case studies to illustrate how real life settings have improved their outdoor space

This full colour, illustrated resource will make it as easy as possible for managers, practitioners and parents to plan and manage an outdoor improvement project, involving children at the core of the work and linking the process and the improved outside environment to the aims of the Early Years Foundation Stage.

Part 1:
First steps

Here we look at why the outdoors is important to children. This will help you make the case for developing your outdoor area while fully engaging both your team and your children. There is also practical advice on how to overcome some of the common issues and barriers that arise when developing the outdoors, ideas on gathering a project group together, how to get children, staff and the community involved, how to ensure everyone is committed to your project, and where to start when setting up a management team.

Why develop your outdoors?

There are many important reasons for developing your outdoor space – and understanding the benefits that can be brought to you children, your whole setting and beyond will provide you with the motivation to get started, and keep going.

Tools to help

• Special places (p. 139)
• Why young children need contact with nature (p. 120)
• Developing positive attitudes to outdoors (p. 116)
• Positive parents (p. 129)
• Contact the press (p. 134)
• Press release template (p. 147)

Benefits for children

The outdoors offers different experiences for children who lead mainly indoor lives. Here are a few ideas to get you thinking.

Developing and sustaining good health and a sense of wellbeing

• • Fresh air and vigorous activity are essential for children’s wellbeing and fitness.
• • Even with open windows and doors 25% more oxygen is available in the air outdoors.
• • The more children’s muscles and senses are exercised, the more the brain will develop its capacity for learning.
• • Children need the space to practise large scale movements which are often impractical indoors.

Staying safe while developing the skills to manage risk and meet new challenges

• • Outdoor spaces develop children’s confidence to take risks and meet challenges while learning how to be safe.
• • Managing physical risks encourages children to have a go and test their own boundaries without fear of failure.
• • Children can create their own dens and hiding places away from an adult gaze.

Enjoying and achieving new understanding, skills and competence through playful exploration and developing lines of enquiry

• • A well-designed, stimulating outdoor area can offer irresistible learning opportunities and extend the learning that goes on inside.
• • The outdoors provides variety with changing environments, seasons and weather, and develops knowledge and understanding of the world, life cycles, etc.
• • Quiet children will often ‘find their voice’ and use language differently outdoors. It is a great place to develop and listen to stories, sing songs and action rhymes, support role play.
• • It is an excellent place to explore different feelings and emotions through places to be quiet, relax and daydream. It certainly stimulates the imagination and creativity: just consider how many great composers, artists and writers have been inspired by nature.
• • There are endless possibilities for scientific exploration and investigation, such as the properties of water, mud, plants or mini-beasts.
• • Numerical reasoning and problem solving skills can be developed very practically with pacing out and marking the hard surfaces, building with blocks or working with big volumes of water or sand.

Developing confidence, participating and contributing

• • Children enjoy taking an active part in planning and deciding what changes and improvements should be made.
• • By involving them in developing their outdoor areas they are being encouraged to make decisions, solve problems and to think creatively.
• • The opportunities for different kinds of activities mean that children will often engage differently with each other – and develop new relationships or ways of playing and working alongside each other, co-operating in pairs or in groups.

Developing skills for life and being part of the environment and the community

• • Engaging in experiences outdoors helps to develop the life skills of confidence, perseverance, creativity, decision making and leadership.
• • Playing and working outside helps children understand and respect nature, the environment and the interdependence of humans, plants, animals and ecological systems such as the weather and life cycles.
• • If community members are involved in planning and caring for the outside space it enables children to feel more connected with the daily activities of the community outside their setting.
• • The outdoor learning experience and sense of community will be enhanced if children are regularly taken on trips off-site – for example to visit the local park, farm or market garden.

‘The outdoors is not an extra to the Foundation Phase: the Foundation Phase and the outdoors are inseparable.’

Welsh Assembly Government Good Practice Guide

‘Outdoor play in particular can also be a major contributor to outcomes around physical activity and healthy weight. Developing play spaces and play opportunities for children and removing barriers to play is therefore a priority.’

Early years Framework, Scotland

Getting everyone on board

At the start of a project to develop your outdoor space, engage staff and parents in thinking about the benefits of working, teaching, learning and playing outdoors. You could:

• • Involve the children and staff in developing your own poster or wall display about why going outside benefits children.
• • Hold a parents’ evening and show the PowerPoint presentation on the CD that comes with this toolkit. Pose the questions,‘What do you remember about playing when you were young?’ and ‘How have children’s opportunities to play changed in the last 20 years?’.
• • Get people to think about what it’s important for children to be able to do outdoors by using the Activity ranking exercise in Part 4.
• • To help everybody think about how they feel about the outdoors use the Special places activity in Part 4 – and involve the children.

Benefits for the whole setting and beyond

Making a good impression

First impressions are very important. What your outdoor space looks like and how it is used speaks volumes about the values of your setting and what it stands for. A boring, neglected play space will not speak of a commitment to children’s wellbeing or high standards of care and education. An outside area that is beautiful, interesting and welcoming invites prospective parents and carers to come and in and find out more.

Reflecting your values

Consider what messages are conveyed by your outdoor area and whether they are the messages and values you want to convey. For example:

• • ‘Welcome to our outdoor space’ can be conveyed with attractive entrances and boundaries and a well organised and maintained space.
• • ‘We value the comfort of children and staff’ can be expressed by seating, shelter and all-weather protection.
• • ‘We value active learning’ can be communicated through the provision of a rich range of play materials and extended opportunities for children to be outdoors.
• • ‘We are proud of what our children achieve outdoors’ can be conveyed through displays and records with images and examples of outdoor play and learning.
• • ‘We promote healthy lifestyles’ can be put across by providing areas for growing food, and landscaping and equipment for children to be physically energetic and active.

Are there any other messages your outdoor area conveys to children, staff or visitors? Early research by Learning through Landscapes demonstrated the link between the way school grounds are designed and managed and the attitudes and behaviour of the pupils. Very young children are affected by these subtle but significant messages in a similar way.

Meeting the requirements of the curriculum

We can think of the curriculum as the kinds of experiences we want children to have and the kinds of things we want them to learn. This means there is no area of learning that cannot be supported outdoors at least as well as indoors. The curricula for early years in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all recognise the importance of the outdoor environment for child...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1: First steps
• Part 2: The process of change
• Part 3: Deciding on design elements
• Part 4: Resources