Outdoors: Key 2 - All aboard!

The outdoor environment is now recognised as equally important as – but different to – indoor provision. As we learn to live with the coronavirus pandemic, outdoors is also the best place to be for health and wellbeing.

A number of core organisational issues make all the difference to how well outdoor provision works for everyone. Paying attention to these ‘12 Keys to Unlocking Learning Outdoors’ and working on them as a team unlocks the wonderful potential of the outdoors as an enjoyable, effective and empowering environment.

KEY 2: PARENTAL ENGAGEMENT

Parents:

• understand what is offered and how it benefits their child (including challenge)
• often see their children engaged in play outdoors
• receive clear and frequent information about their child’s learning outdoors
• are engaged and involved by the setting in many ways.
  
  

WHY IS THIS ISSUE KEY TO UNLOCKING THE OUTDOORS?

Parents, of course, want what is best for their child, but they may not have much experience of ‘outdoor learning’, being only able to draw on their own memories of playtime or field trips at school.

They may have negative experiences or worries that dominate their feelings about their child being outside, or cultural perspectives that hinder their acceptance of the outdoors being part of the environment their child is in across the year – wet, damp, cold, sun, heat, danger, dirt, harmful insects, and so on.

Being sufficiently aware of the daily conditions and supportive of the setting’s aspirations about playing and learning outdoors on a daily basis is necessary for them to dress their child in clothes that will keep them comfortable and able to get stuck into what is on offer.

Having every parent and carer fully with you on your journey of capturing the full potential of the outdoors will make all the difference to both beginning the journey and in getting there. The aim must be to engage parents in what you are trying to do, every step of the way and in the true partnership that early childhood education practice always seeks, so that they are as enthusiastic about achieving high-quality experiences outdoors as the staff are themselves.

Working on this key makes it more likely that children will be dressed for being outdoors on arrival and can get straight into play outside, and will also be ready for walking home or going to the park at pick-up time. Parents and carers will see your outdoor environment in action, becoming aware of what their child values about being outdoors and how it supports their wellbeing, development and learning. This lets them change their idea of outdoors being ‘break’ or ‘playtime’ and start to appreciate the real value of learning outdoors.

WHAT DO WE NEED TO BE WORKING ON IN PRACTICE?

To bring this about, your setting must try many ways of engaging and involving parents. While involvement is valuable, the key here is to engage parents with what actually goes on during outdoor play and learning, helping them to understand what is offered and how it benefits their child (including the necessity of challenge). Critically, they must often see their children engaged in play outdoors, at the beginning and end of the day, for example, and receive clear and frequent information about their child’s wellbeing, learning and development through being outdoors.

It is important that parents and carers are engaged with what the setting is aiming to achieve, and appreciate the depth and breadth of what learning outdoors through play can do for their child. Pay attention to helping parents and carers understand what you do outdoors and why you do it, beginning at induction and continuing by all available means throughout the time the family is with the setting.

When this is well addressed, parents will support your efforts, be more comfortable with perceived ‘risks’ and are likely to equip their child with suitable outdoor clothing.

In effective outdoor practice, parents and carers receive accessible and frequent communications regarding what their child will be able to do outdoors or has been involved in and shown interest in outside, and regularly see or join their children engaged outdoors. Through the continual and enthusiastic efforts of staff to make the learning visible, parents come to understand what outdoor provision is offered, how it benefits their child and how they can support you – for example, through allowing their child to get dirty, providing suitable clothing or by donating resources. Because the setting has many ways of engaging and involving parents and carers, and continues to find additional methods to reach them all, they become committed to the idea of their child having extensive high-quality outdoor experiences.

HOW TO MAKE A START AT DEVELOPING PROVISION AND PRACTICE

Things to consider, discuss and evaluate

• Are you helping your parents understand what you are trying to do outdoors?
• Do parents often see their children playing outside and do they frequently receive communications about their own child’s play and learning in the outdoors?
• How are they helped to understand what is offered and how it benefits their child?

Things to explore and read

• 50 Fantastic Ideas for Involving Parents by Marianne Sargent (Featherstone, 2013).
• The Sense of Wonder by Rachel Carson (HarperCollins Publishers, 1998).
• 50 Fantastic Ideas for Nursery Gardens by June O’Sullivan and Clodagh Halse (Featherstone, 2018).
• Learning with Nature: A how-to guide to inspiring children through outdoor games and activities by Marina Robb, Victoria Mew and Anna Richardson (Green Books, 2015).
• Imagine Childhood: Exploring the world through nature, imagination and play by Sarah Olmsted (Roost Books, 2012).

Things to do

• Show a rolling set of images of the day’s outdoor play on a screen in the reception area at the end of the session or day, emphasising children’s active involvement and deep engagement.
• Trial making it possible for parents and carers to drop off and collect their child from the outdoors while it is in operation. Make sure staff are able to attend to parents outside, discussing what is happening and how it is managed, and also encouraging the parents to watch what goes on or to join their child in what they have selected to do.
• Arrange a series of practical workshops for parents, such as den-building, exploring a mud kitchen, making rose-petal perfume or being physically active. Discuss how you provide these experiences to their children and unpick the social, physical, emotional and cognitive learning that is embedded in these activities.
  
  

Engaging parents in outdoor play

‘Supporting parents to recognise that the outdoor environment is a wonderful place for the children to play and explore is the first step towards them truly engaging with “outdoor play and learning”. If we do not prepare the ground well with new families, the transition for the child may not always be as smooth as it could be,’ says Menna Godfrey, owner and pedagogical lead at Quackers in Copmanthorpe, outside York.

‘Staff members engaging in inductions need to be excited about the possibilities that the outdoors offers, so that parents and carers come to embrace the opportunities of our outdoor space. We encourage parents to visit us while we are in the garden and recently we have welcomed them on our daily walk.

‘Our stay-and-play sessions enable parents to observe the deep engagement of children in their explorations in the garden. The most valuable tool I believe we have is the way in which we share what this may mean for their child’s development, foregrounding the outdoor environment’s role in the play that has taken place.

‘As children develop a relationship with this environment, parents notice the changes in their own children and are challenged to change the opportunities that they provide at home, so the engagement of the whole family with the natural environment can develop and deepen.’

Professor Jan White is author of several books on outdoor provision and practice and codirector of the specialist training company Outdoors Thinking