Nursery World - Enabling Environments: Outdoors

Encouraging children to explore the outdoors more freely proved to be a culture change in Poole, says Clare Schmieder, Early Learning Advisory Teacher (ELAT) within the Poole Early Years Team.

In Poole, we were keen to organise some early years training with two main aims: to enable children to explore the outdoors more freely and to enable practitioners to find a better balance between adult-led and child-initiated play, and so co-construct plans for children's development through discussion with the children and other adults.

For some settings, these aims constituted a major culture change. So, our philosophy was that a new way of working with children would be easier to introduce in an unfamiliar environment, where different habits were not already entrenched and possibly difficult to eradicate.

Taking part were three full-time early learning advisory teachers and members of staff from seven PVI settings, including eight graduates and two Level 3 practitioners.

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