Have you ever looked at your outdoor space and felt that you are not exploiting its full potential for play and learning? Have you tried to improve the space but felt demoralised by the lack of support and funding? Has it become yet another demand on your time and energy?
Lots of early years practitioners feel that developing their outside space is just too big a project to tackle, and so yet another season goes by with children being deprived of the special opportunities for learning that outdoor experiences can offer.
However, with enthusiasm and ingenuity (and a little bit of money) many early years providers have transformed their outdoor space into vibrant environments full of ideas for supporting children's development.
One nursery found that 'parking bays' marked out on the tarmac enriched children's play with the trikes and led to child-initiated imaginary play involving mechanics and petrol pumps. Staff supported the play by enabling children to take the tool kits outside and encouraging them to create a pump from a piece of hosing from the water tray attached to a large cardboard box. During the session, staff observing children's play noticed a marked increase in the use of language for thinking and communication as children co-operated and shared ideas, and discussed and developed their own solutions to design problems with the petrol pump.
One day nursery found an imaginative solution to the problem of older children's enthusiastic musical sessions waking up the sleeping babies in the next room - they transferred the music sessions to their garden.
Children helped to decorate old saucepans and these were strung up outside with wooden spoons as beaters. Plastic lidded buckets of varying sizes provided the means for a weather-proof drum kit and the babies slept on.
One pre-school got hold of a builder's mixing tray and used it to collect rainwater so that the children would always have a puddle to stamp in. In drier weather the tray was used with earth, stones and twigs to create an exciting environment for small- world play with dinosaurs. Similarly, another pre-school filled old tyres with earth and planted grass seed on top. Once seeded, the grass provided a living environment for the group's plastic farm animals to reside in.
Getting out and about all year round is easy too - when you're kitted out.
Consider keeping welly boots and waterproofs somewhere that children can easily access (see picture, right) - if you have a shelter by the outside door, a shelf and some hooks would be perfectly located there. You needn't even 'splash out' on new equipment - just ask parents to donate wellies and waterproofs their children have grown out of.
Enriched curriculum
One nursery erected a shed close to the door to the outdoor space, but it is a shed with a difference (see picture, left). The roof is made from clear plastic sheeting to let lots of light in, and as well as providing accessible storage for all sorts of interesting items, children can take part in art activities inside the shed, or take out the weird and wonderful objects (like bicycle wheels) stored there especially for creating ephemeral art in the garden.
As a result of developments like these, both staff and children stop seeing the outside area as just a place for unstructured physical play. Instead, the true potential of the garden for enriching all aspects of the curriculum becomes apparent. Children have a wider range of learning experiences and staff stop worrying that children are 'wasting time'
outside when they should be inside 'learning' and instead they actively support children's play outside. The children quickly respond to the new sense of value placed on outside experiences, and in return, they take more pride in their activities and achievements.
When you are thinking about developing your outdoor space, don't fall into the trap of believing that an overnight transformation is the best way forward. Some settings that have tried this approach have spent their precious funds on expensive equipment with unsatisfactory results; although the work carried out created an overall impression of improvement, the lack of a preceding consultation process meant that children's needs were not met. Consequently, both staff and children were disappointed with the results.
In Kent the Early Years Development and Childcare Partnership (EYDCP) has identified several concerns about early years provision outdoors. Across the full range of provision, staff were less confident about supporting children's play outside, children were not getting outside enough, and the quality of their play experience was poor.
To tackle these concerns Kent EYDCP is working with Learning Through Landscapes, a national charity committed to improving educational environments, to deliver a new and exciting project - the Kent 'Space to Grow' Project. The aim of the project is to aid maintained and non-maintained settings in the early years to move forwards in their outdoor play provision and practice and provide an integrated high-quality outdoor play experience for children.
The funding provided by Kent EYDCP is providing a financial award to 15 settings and the support of a development officer for a year. The role of the development officer is to help staff to map out the process of change, encourage them to involve children, and help them to develop transferable low-cost ideas and solutions to the limitations and barriers that prevent children from accessing and using the outdoors to its full potential. The Kent project will be evaluated by Learning Through Landscapes to provide inspiration and a role model for other settings wishing to develop their outdoor play practice.
Fantastic competition
If you wish your EYDCP could provide a similar service to that available to Kent settings, don't lose heart. Nursery World and Learning Through Landscapes have teamed up for the second year to offer readers a chance to enter a fantastic competition to develop their outdoor space. Some exciting prizes are being supplied by Hand Made Places and Step by Step. Competition entrants will have a chance to win outdoor equipment and a site visit followed up by ongoing support.
Entering the competition is easy. Just fill in the application form overleaf and tell us what you have done so far outside as well as your hopes for the future. Don't forget to let us know how you have involved your children in the project so far and how you will continue to involve them if you are successful in the competition. NW
Gail Ryder Richardson is an early years development officer for Learning Through Landscapes
