Nursery World - Enabling Environments: Outdoors

Action research has helped to develop a nursery garden to better
provide open-ended opportunities for learning, as well improving
practice. Teacher Sue Duglan breaks down the transformation.

The garden at Ludwick Nursery School, in Welwyn Garden City, is a large space shared by children in both the nursery school and Squirrels Day Nursery. It needed attention to make it a more stimulating resource, promoting rich open-ended learning opportunities, while practitioners needed to become confident in providing challenging physical play experiences. Part of that transformation was made possible through an action research project (see also box).

Physical Development (PD) became a prime curriculum area in the revised Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (2012), reinforcing its crucial importance in early development and the need for children to have a diet of movement-rich experiences, which underpin all learning.

Register now to continue reading

Thank you for visiting Nursery World and making use of our archive of more than 35,000 expert features, subject guides, case studies and policy updates. Why not register today and enjoy the following great benefits:

What's included