Nursery World Article: All About Outdoors Under 3 - Outdoor Matters!

All about...
eyfs best practice
Outdoor
provision for
under-threes
Babies, toddlers and two-year-olds and the outdoors are a natural combination, with
endless benefits for learning and development. Jan White explains where to find them
Photographs at sandfield natural play centre, merseyside, by pauline neild
Digging with long-handled tools is an ideal way for younger children to explore the natural world, as well as learn about teamworking
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eyfs best practice
The Early Years Foundation
Stage has established high
expectations about outdoor
play on a daily basis for all
children, but we urgently
need to decide what appropriate
provision outdoors actually
means for babies, toddlers and twoyear-olds.
Children of this age are intensely
driven to explore and are hugely disadvantaged
if their explorations are
restricted to a limited, safety-surfaced
area. To provide the best possible circumstances
for well-being and healthy
development, we must offer rich and
extensive daily outdoor provision that
provides what the indoors does not.
Teams need to discuss how being outdoors
can benefit the babies and very
young children in their care in a way
that indoor provision cannot.
The outdoors is special to very
young children, and being outdoors
is substantially different to being
indoors. Any exploration of appropriate
provision must start from the
child and match this to what is special
about the outdoors for them. Through
thinking extensively about what children
are like at each stage of this period,
we can decide on the experiences
they need at any particular time.
Considering the key experiences
that babies, toddlers or two-year-olds
need for well-being and development
across each year then gives clear guidance
for developing appropriate and
valuable provision that harnesses the
special nature of the outdoors. By
knowing the experiences we want to
support through outdoor provision,
we can begin to create a truly responsive
place for well-being and development
that also extends what we are
providing indoors.
BABIES
Babies’ earliest months are a time of
amazing development of the senses,
mind and body as they gradually
develop the art of sitting, crawling,
standing and beginning to walk.
They are intensely interested in the
humans, events and things around
them, but must rely on adults to be
tuned into what interests them, make
experiences available to them and
respond positively to their reactions
and needs.
The outdoors is a wonderfully
sensorial place for a baby throughout
this year, with lots of sensations
for the body, things to notice, watch
and reach for, objects and materials to
touch, feel and handle, sounds both
near and far to listen to, and interesting
places to be in with an attentive
and responsive adult.
Sleeping
Many settings are finding that babies
and toddlers sleep better outside in
cool, fresh air in flatbed cots or prams.
Many children fall asleep more easily
and transfer more gently into wakefulness
with the gentle mobile of clouds
or a leafy branch overhead and the
sounds of nature and children playing
outdoors. Good clothing and bedding
enables young children in Denmark
to sleep outside in temperatures going
down to -12°C!
Rocking and swinging
Babies need to be rocked, finding this
motion soothing and stimulating.
The experience of rocking and swinging
plays an important role in the
neurological development of balance
and co-ordination, so it is sought out
by children throughout childhood. It
should be an important element of
good outdoor provision for all ages.
Hammocks are a resource that offer
a range of gentle swinging motions
from birth onwards and are perhaps
easier to provide than swings. Rocking
chairs and outdoor swing-seats to
share with adults are also particularly
effective for babies in this year.
Sensorial stimulation
Not only do babies experience their
world through movement and sensation
– they must work hard to develop
these sensory systems so that they
become sophisticated and well integrated
with each other.
The outdoor world is full of smells,
sounds, sights, textures and changing
light, air quality and temperatures. The
feel of the wind caressing the skin and
moving the hair, the sensation of dappled
light under a tree, the pleasure of
TODDLERS
A child’s first year is a wonderful time
of movement and exploration as they
think and understand through moving
and using their whole body.
The outdoors is full of interest, with
the space and opportunity for movement
that they need so much, and
providing the first-hand experiences
that toddlers need to construct knowledge
and understanding.
The one year-old constantly handles
and moves materials, intensely
curious about the world and ardently
discovering how things behave, learnfeeling
light rain on arms and face, are
just a few of the valuable experiences
babies can have outdoors. They need
to experience the full range of weather
conditions throughout the year – suitably
clothed, but not over-dressed.
Plants with a range of textures,
smells and ways of moving in the
wind, such as grasses, lavender,
thyme, rosemary and camomile, can
provide valuable sensory experiences.
Tummy and back play
It is imperative that babies spend lots
of time lying free of restraint on their
backs, and especially on their tummies.
A great deal of neurological and
anatomical development takes place
through being in these positions, also
allowing babies to play with their feet
and work on rolling over.
Depending on weather conditions,
babies can lie directly on grass, sand
or paving so that they can feel temperature
and texture on their body,
or they can be more protected with
cushioned picnic mats. The number
of things to listen to and look at outside
will ensure that they enjoy these
experiences, especially with an attentive
adult on the ground with them.
Looking, gazing, batting,
reaching, grabbing
Visual stimulation is vital in the first
year of life. The outdoors provides a
complex visual landscape that supports
development especially well,
including turning to and locating
sights or sounds, gazing and fixing
on an object, tracking moving objects,
being able to see things at a distance,
developing depth vision and good
spatial awareness.
The outdoors boosts development of physical movements
Non-mobile babies need to be put
in positions that give them plenty
to look at, reach for, bat and grasp.
Adults should carry them to interesting
places or sit with them to share
interest about the environment.
Mobile babies should be moving in
an interesting landscape with different
views and perspectives. Watching
older children and the natural world,
such as dry leaves blown by the wind,
can be fascinating.
Surfaces for crawling
Crawling babies need a variety of
surfaces to provide different tactile
experiences and on which to develop
movement skills. As the baby moves
from one surface to another, their
attention is brought to the contrasting
sensations and the change in how
they need to use their body.
Paving is hard, cool, smooth and
resistant; grass is warm, soft and firm
but may be wet, while sand is soft and
yielding. Gravel is sharp and loose
but bark is warm, moist and graspable.
Tarmac is hard and rough, while
decking might be warm and ridged.
Pulling upright, standing
and cruising
Babies who are ready to pull themselves
upright need pulling up points
and graspable surfaces to hold on to,
stand at and balance on, and later need
a level surface at just the right height
to progress to moving sideways. This
can be planned for as much outside
and indoors: very effective cruising
walls can be made from long mounds
of tough grass 40-50cm high.
These can also provide the boundaries
for a protected outdoor baby
area where they can lie, sit and crawl.
From this new position, standing
babies can delight in watching bigger
children in the rest of the outdoor
space and build up to taking their
first wobbly steps.
ing about their own body and finding
out what it can do. Spending time
outdoors with toddlers is delightful as
they share their intense curiosity and
bring adults’ attention to long-overlooked
and forgotten details, especially
in the natural world.
Moving in different ways
Toddlers have an enormous need for
movement, requiring spaces, adult
support and clothing that encourage
physical activity (such as appropriate
footwear and trousers to allow movement
without presenting hazards).
Like crawling babies, toddlers
who are mastering locomotion and
co-ordination need several kinds of
surfaces demanding a range of body
control, effort and attention. Once
they are past wobbly walking, they
need uneven and less predictable
surfaces and some that give way a
little underfoot, such as grass, paving,
sand, gravel, bark, packed earth,
decking and even pavements outside
the setting.
An outdoor space that has rubber
surfacing only is developmentally
inadequate for children of this age.
Clambering and going up
and down
One-year-olds also love to clamber and
are driven to master the art of going
up and down. So, they need steps,
small changes in levels and slopes
with a range of gradients – some easy
and some more of a challenge. Oneyear-olds
also revel in being higher
up, where they get different perspective
and a sense of being ‘big’.
Motor control and co-ordination
are extremely important for successful
life functioning, so bumps and
bruises have to be tolerated for toddlers
to access enough of this physical
exploration.
➤
Case Study: Sandfield Natural Play Centre, Merseyside
Sandfield Natural Play Centre,
in Whiston, Merseyside, aims
to offer all its children, aged
from birth to 11, ‘curiosity,
discovery, wonder, adventure,
challenge and a strong sense
of belonging’. Babies, toddlers
and two-year-olds have
their own garden, but often
visit siblings and other older
children.
Owner/manager Suzanne
Scott says, ‘Our philosophy
and commitment to outdoors
is borne out of a shared belief
that an outdoor, flexible
learning environment allows
growth as individuals, strong
relationships with others and
attachment to the world,
and encourages creative and
lateral thinking.’
Robust recruitment
procedures and ongoing
expectations of staff, with
close attention to their
confidence and comfort
outdoors, ensure a high
commitment to being outside.
The staff team have taken
time to develop with parents
a shared vision and values,
and parents now choose
this setting because of its
emphasis on natural outdoor
play. Use of ICT for homeshared
records, learning
stories and interpretive
displays deepens staff
knowledge and parental
engagement. Families are also
involved with developments
and work in the garden.
Because of good transition
areas and procedures, children
move between outdoors and
indoors whenever they wish.
Children can sleep outside
and always have appropriate
clothing through the year.
A suitable insurance policy
and strong ‘benefit-risk
management’ approach,
ensuring hygiene and safety
issues are met, allow children
to access a wide range of play
in the natural world. There
is a focus on open-ended,
transformable materials,
especially sand, soil, water
and plants.
Practitioners and parents
witness daily how being
outdoors inspires children’s
action and thinking, supports
their happiness and health
and encourages both adults
and children to take their time
and enjoy just being together.
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eyfs best practice
Swinging, spinning, sliding
and bouncing
The need to experience fast motion
through space continues all through
childhood, but toddlers especially
seek out these sensations to wire up
the vestibular sensory system that
will give them balance, co-ordination
and body control throughout
life. This age group especially loves to
experience motion through physical
play with adults, but they also need
lots of daily access to swings, slides
and roundabouts.
Look for ways to offer turning, spinning
and falling sensations in lots of
suitably challenging ways for toddlers
(supported by attentive adults), at the
park as well as in the setting.
Hiding and nurturing
Toddlers need small spaces that provide
enclosure, softness and comfort.
They enjoy playing hiding games or
repeatedly getting in and out of little
spaces and finding small places in
among plants. Many outdoor areas lack
the nurture that these nooks and crannies
provide, being seen only as places
for energy and ‘letting off steam’.
As babies and toddlers move frequently
and suddenly from an active
state to a need for restoration, it is
important to offer places where they
can get inside or underneath, places
to sit with adults, places where they
can stand and watch others, and quieter
places away from high activity.
Sand is an ideal sensory, manipulatable material
Collecting, handling and
transporting, pushing and
pulling
Once they are walking, toddlers have
their hands free for holding and moving
objects, and this becomes a strong
feature of their play. Toddlers typically
collect and gather, handle and
manipulate, fill and empty, lift and
carry, push and pull, haul and dump,
place, pile and stack.
Provide abundant materials that
can be gathered and moved, lots of
containers that can be filled, and plenty
of vessels with handles or wheels
that can be moved and transported.
Natural materials, such as pebbles,
wood pieces, shells and large seeds
have lots of attributes that make them
fascinating to toddlers. Baskets, buckets,
watering cans, pots, pans, wheelbarrows
and vehicles all support these
drives, enabling one-year-olds to make
the most of being outdoors.
Water and sand
Sand and water are among the very
best materials for children of all ages
outdoors, being two of the key ingredients
of a successful outdoor environment
for under-threes. Intensely
sensory and easily manipulated, sand
and water lend themselves to the pretend
play that emerges at this stage
in a child’s life and develops so much
more in two-year-olds.
Outdoors, the child should be able
to experience these materials in a
whole-bodied, multi-sensory way and
be able to move them around and mix
them. To enable this, sand needs to be
in as large an area as there is space for,
and water should be flowing. An outdoor
tap for running water is almost
essential.
Cause, effect and agency
One-year-olds are intent on discovering
how the world works and especially
driven to find out what they
can make happen in it. An effective
outdoor environment must be rich in
opportunities for children to experience
‘cause and effect’.
Resources to provide include
objects to make sounds on or with,
and ways to make marks in sand or
mud as well as with water, chalk and
paint. Taps that turn to allow water to
flow and stop and water to mix into
sand and soil give satisfying results
and provide a powerful sense of control
and agency.
Seating
Seating is an important
element of a good
environment for very young
children, since adults are
best placed to be attentive,
engaged and available
when they are comfortably
sitting down. This will bring
the adult’s face to the right
height and provide that allimportant
lap.
Several sheltered
and comfortable seats,
positioned near to where
children want to play, helps
to mix ages, gives plenty to
share interest and means
that adults are providing
the secure base needed
for exploration. From here,
adults can observe closely
to tune into children’s play
and show their interest in the
child’s activity. A climbercovered
swing seat is the
perfect place to enjoy being
outdoors together.
TWO-YEAR-OLDS
A child’s third year is one of emerging
imagination, language and friendships
that is greatly supported by
spending plenty of time each day in
rich outdoor environments. Two-yearold
find many things to be fascinated
by outdoors and can now express
themselves verbally, using language
for thinking, communication and
influencing people.
They are still highly movementand
action-oriented, with great needs
for space and freedom, for ‘doing’ and
for first-hand experience. Through
these, they construct complex ideas
and understandings about how people
and the world work. Increasing
imagination deriving from real experiences,
alongside a growing ability to
regulate feelings and behaviour, enables
two-year-olds to engage in satisfying
pretend play together.
A wide range of movement
experiences
Having mastered locomotion, twoyear-olds
now need an outdoor environment
that invites them to engage
in skipping, running, climbing, jumping
and landing, swinging, rolling,
sliding, bouncing and balancing.
Pushing emotional and physical
boundaries gives them a great sense
of achievement and capability, helps
them join in with others and develops
resilient ‘have a go’ dispositions.
They also love to sing, dance and play
simple games, so practitioners should
have a good repertoire of these to draw
on whenever the moment is right.
Sand and water – mixing
and making
Sand and water are essential ingredients
of outdoor provision for this age
group. Outdoors, these can be felt with
the whole body, dug in with long-handled
tools, transferred into containers,
watering cans, buckets and wheelbarrows,
transported from place to place,
mixed and stirred with other materials,
and transformed into ‘food’ and
many other imaginary things.
Running water and rain add hugely
to the opportunities for exploration
and action that are available in a water
tray indoors. Jumping in puddles and
standing under leaking gutters are
also essential outdoor experiences.
Gathering, organising,
placing and representing
Two-year-olds still love to collect, fill
and transport, so stones, sticks, shells,
wood pieces, plant materials and
other natural materials make highly
effective resources, along with a range
of containers and transporters. Now,
however, they will increasingly be
used to make lines and simple patterns
and to represent other things,
such as a face with eyes and nose or
a plate of food.
The open-ended nature of these
materials makes them versatile so that
they can be whatever the child’s imagination
wants them to be. Large and
heavy resources, such as logs or small
tyres, are excellent for children of this
age, especially if they have a fascination
for things that turn and roll.
Dens and hidey holes
As friendship develops over this year,
two-year-olds really enjoy being able
to find small, semi-hidden spaces
where they can spend time together
away from adults. These little spaces
support conversations and emerging
pretend ‘home’ play.
Wise practitioners will give children
the time and space to sort out the
conflicts that inevitably arise when
two-year-olds are together, allowing
the desire to play together to drive the
development of self-control and social
skills. However, children of this age
still have a strong need to know that
adults are available and looking after
their well-being and safety.
Growing things and natural
phenomena
Two-year-olds are intensely interested
in the natural world, such as hunting
for minibeasts, experiencing wind
and rain or experimenting with shadows.
Their outdoor space needs to be
full of curiosity-rich and problem-rich
situations, where they can continue to
explore how things respond to them
and how they can have an influence
on their world.
At this age, children will have lots to
Further
information
l Nurture through
Nature by
Claire Warden
(Mindstretchers,
2007)
l A Nurturing
Environment for
Children up to Three
by Sindhu Hope
(London Borough of
Islington, 2007)
l ‘Babies Outdoors’,
‘Toddlers Outdoors’,
‘Two-Year-Olds
Outdoors’ from
Siren Films (training
packs of DVD with
accompanying
notes by Jan White),
available from www.
sirenfilms.co.uk
l Nursery World
Practice in Pictures
series by Anne
O’Connor: 4 March, 1
April, 6 May, and
3 June 2010
l The Sky’s the Limit:
Developing outdoor
provision for babies
and toddlers by
Jan White, Early
Education. www.
earlyeducation.
org.uk
l ‘Early Years
Outdoors’ support
for outdoor provision
birth to five from
Learning through
Landscapes, www.
ltl.org.uk
talk about in such a place, especially
with genuinely interested adults who
give them time to think and speak.
These situations can also be used to
help two-year-olds learn how to keep
themselves safe and healthy.
Real tasks and the world
beyond the setting
Two-year-olds thrive on feeling capable
and responsible, and love to ‘help’
with caring for the outdoor environment.
Practitioners should take time
to consider how children within this
age group could be involved – such
as by tidying up, washing windows,
sweeping leaves and growing vegetables
– and build in the time for this to
happen on a routine basis.
While the outdoor area should
be a rich sensory and exploratory
place, nothing can beat the world of
real things, real people and real life
beyond this. Another fantastic layer of
outdoor provision can be harnessed
through taking very small groups on
frequent short trips by foot into the
nearby locality and community. This
works especially well when walks are
taken at the child’s pace, pausing to
investigate all the myriad things that
interest them.
THE ADULT ROLE
The most important component of
successful outdoor provision is a team
of committed and enthusiastic adults,
who fully appreciate what the outdoors
offers, who are dedicated to getting
very young children outdoors for
plenty of time, every day, throughout
the year, and who overcome the barriers
or limitations in their setting.
They enjoy being outside with these
children, striving to understand what
they are doing and how they are benefiting
from being there, and taking
pleasure in being with them in this
fabulous journey of discovery.
Babies cannot wait for the weather
to be nice. And after all, every type of
weather holds interest and possibilities
for these eager meaning-makers.
Children under three need attentive,
tuned-in, comfortable and patient
adults who follow their agenda and
pace, providing the safe base and
companionship that enables them to
discover everything the outdoors has
to offer. n
Jan White is an early childhood
consultant who works nationally to
advocate and support high-quality
outdoor provision for children aged
from birth to five
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