Nursery World - Enabling Environments: Outdoors

Julie Mountain continues her series on Newham’s Outdoors and Active programme by looking at its approach to open spaces, surfaces and level changes, climbing, large objects and storage

Children’s delight in their own unrestricted, exuberant physicality is a joy to witness: hair full of grass and sticks; rosy cheeks aching from laughing; and limbs swinging with the sheer exhilaration of movement. At least, that’s how it should be.

For some children, opportunities to revel in the outdoors are irregular and infrequent, and the reasons are many and complex. Time pressures on family life, distances from open spaces and fear of injury (or litigation) are just a few explanations given when parents and settings recognise they are neglecting outdoor play.

AUDIT

Participants observed children playing outdoors at various times of the day and on different days of the week. They also recorded which resources children chose to play with and where and how many children were involved in each observed episode of play. Some participants, familiar with the Leuven scales for well-being and involvement, included these in their audit.

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