Pre-schoolers need plenty of opportunities to build up their physical dexterity and motor skills. There is no better place to indulge in physically active play than outdoors.
‘The type of full body movements that we need young children to make in order to develop their minds and bodies is best done in the space and air of outdoors,’ explains Julie Mountain, outdoor play consultant and director of Play Learning Life.
Alongside physical play, practitioners need time to plan ‘robust’ outdoor curriculums for three- and four-year-olds that focus on how to ‘maximise the intellectual challenge on offer’, she says.
‘Tasks and provocations that encourage purposeful mark-making, maths skills and language, problem-solving, collaboration and turn-taking opportunities need to be thought about. Practitioners should focus on what they want each child to achieve and how the resources, the space and the seasonal changes outdoors can support this,’ Mountain adds.
PLANNING FOR LARGE-SCALE PLAY
Outdoor play is often accompanied by noise and exuberance, neither of which are compatible with indoor spaces. When planning your outdoor curriculum, it is imperative that movement is factored into each learning objective for the activities on offer. ‘If it's a maths exercise, it should incorporate children moving around the space, reaching and bending, collecting and pointing and so on,’ says Mountain.
The type of movement will depend on the child's age and stage of development. ‘For pre-schoolers, we might offer responsibilities for caring for the outdoors – watering, tidying up or setting up for the day, keeping records on clipboards, taking photos on the iPad to share with parents,’ she explains.
While this may be tricky if the space is shared with younger children, three- and four-year-olds will ‘make use of what's there, either way’, Mountain says.
GOOD PRACTICE
For Kierna Corr, head of nursery at Windmill Integrated Primary School in Northern Ireland, good practice involves providing children with a space they can use as they need without waiting for adult permission to move things.
‘It should be inspiring, challenging and very messy,’ she explains. ‘Provocations, planned or unplanned, should involve nature: spring flowers, new leaves, fungi, frogs or ice.’
Mountain says ‘fascinating provocation outdoors’ might be inspired by the weather: a snowy day, a rainbow, or daffodils coming out for the first time. ‘Be sure to offer a range of resources to exploit their interest alongside,’ she adds.
IT, such as tablets and mini-recordables, should be accessible outdoors so that older children can tell their own stories about the provocations and share them later.
At Tiddlers Wraparound in Caerphillly, Wales, the environment acts as the third teacher, inviting children to solve problems and explore their ideas through active engagement (see Case study).
Beverley Dickinson, who manages the Froebelian-inspired setting, says children develop essential physical skills as they balance on logs or transport water to nourish the plants. ‘Froebel emphasised the importance of learning through doing. When they are stacking stones or closely observing insects, they are practising focus and honing observation skills. These experiences support the development of gross and fine motor skills,’ she says.
KEY CONSIDERATIONS
Mountain advises that the top three things to consider when setting up an outdoor area for three-to-four year olds are:
- access to water
- spaces for children to dig and transport
- shade and shelter.
Water can be a standard outdoor tap with a hose attached. Or, if the budget permits, running water via a pump into a sandpit or a shallow puddle. ‘This gives children the opportunity to collect and transport it, but also to splash in it and brush it around,’ Mountain says.
A deep, wide sandpit, a raised bed with soil in, or an allotment area is an ideal place for children to dig.
Shady nooks, tree and shrub cover, shade sails and covered sandpits are all important considerations. ‘Look to invest in large-scale garden umbrellas, temporary tarps or pull-out or permanent shades,’ says Mountain.
Corr says waterproof clothing is a must for children and staff. But the bottom line is that three- and four-year-olds ‘need time outdoors and no-one should be waiting for the perfect space before offering it’.
LARGE EQUIPMENT
If space permits, a structure to clamber on is the perfect addition. Mountain says, ‘Standard off-the-shelf play structures are getting more imaginative, but they often focus on climbing rather than clambering, which is really what young children are doing.’
Stoneham YMCA nursery in Eastleigh commissioned a bespoke piece following an outdoor audit with Play Learning Life. The spec was for a long walkway with steep and gentle slopes, places to haul the body upwards and fold it up underneath, hidey holes, platforms to sit on with friends, and covers.
Storage is also key. It needs to be convenient: in the right place, the right size for what it contains, easy to look after and easy for children to access and put away resources.
And when it comes to smaller resources, abundance is important. ‘Have as many popular items as your budget and storage space allows,’ Mountain says. ‘In the sandpit, there's no such thing as too many digging implements or water and carrying vessels. Provide books, baskets of treasure, either mixed up or sorted to suit the time, place, activity or child. Include plenty of bikes and trikes, but ensure access to them is managed as they can definitely interfere with other children's enjoyment of the space.’
case study: Tiddlers Wraparound, Wales
In this Froebelian-inspired setting, pre-schoolers love getting messy and creative in the mud kitchen. Manager Beverley Dickinson says, ‘They make recipes with mud, water and natural materials and it's a favourite spot for imaginative play and sensory exploration. We purposefully separated the mud kitchen from the mud box to support those with a transportation schema. When the children in the mud kitchen shout out for a “mud delivery”, the transporters spring into action, eagerly loading their wheelbarrows or buckets and heading to the mud box to collect their cargo.
‘Ladders and climbing equipment are popular. Children carry them around to test and refine their climbing skills. They love transporting leaves, sticks and mud, developing co-ordination, strength and a sense of purpose. Rain or shine they have access to water play, pouring, filling and creating waterways and learning about cause and effect.
‘Open-ended resources are a must, especially for symbolic play. This summer, children used the large tyres as “hot tubs” and took their babies to the “beach” – the large sandbox.’
outdoor resources for three- and four-year-olds
Water, sand, messy play and gardening: Hope Education's Double Wooden Sink with Pump, £599.99; Community Playthings' Outlast Cascade Play Centre Double, £3,282; Early Excellence's Water Investigations Complete Collection, £895; Outdoor Rustic Wooden Messy Kitchen from Hope, £199.99; Classic Mud Kitchen from Cosy, £390; Outlast classic kitchen 56 cm, £2,270; Cosy's Mud Kitchen Corner Unit, £499; EE's Gardening & Growing Complete Collection, £395; TTS's Modern Living Outdoors set, £1,915 or its Toddler Mud Kitchen, £379.99.
Construction and climbing: TTS's Outdoorable Preschool Package, £6,999; Community Playthings' Outlast School Complete Set, £3,774; EE's Building & Construction Complete Collection, £1,275; Precision Timber's Kinder Low Robinia Scramble Stack, £1,755-£2,255; Cosy's Climbing Crest, £395; Pentagon Play's Get Set Go! Blocks, £2,895.
Reading and retreats: Community Playthings' Outlast Arbour, £1,385; Cosy Direct's Curriculum Shed, £399, or its Forest Fern Peephole, £499; TTS's Mini Outdoor Wooden Hut, £599.
FURTHER INFORMATION
- Play Learning Life: www.plloutdoors.org.uk
- ‘Outdoor learning with young children’ short film, Froebel Trust: https://bit.ly/4fOe1e0
