The Early Years Foundation Stage has established high expectations about outdoor play on a daily basis for all children, but we urgently need to decide what appropriate provision outdoors actually means for babies, toddlers and two-year-olds.
Children of this age are intensely driven to explore and are hugely disadvantaged if their explorations are restricted to a limited, safety-surfaced area. To provide the best possible circumstances for well-being and healthy development, we must offer rich and extensive daily outdoor provision that provides what the indoors does not. Teams need to discuss how being outdoors can benefit the babies and very young children in their care in a way that indoor provision cannot.
The outdoors is special to very young children, and being outdoors is substantially different to being indoors. Any exploration of appropriate provision must start from the child and match this to what is special about the outdoors for them. Through thinking extensively about what children are like at each stage of this period, we can decide on the experiences they need at any particular time.
Considering the key experiences that babies, toddlers or two-year-olds need for well-being and development across each year then gives clear guidance for developing appropriate and valuable provision that harnesses the special nature of the outdoors. By knowing the experiences we want to support through outdoor provision, we can begin to create a truly responsive place for well-being and development that also extends what we are providing indoors.
BABIES
Babies' earliest months are a time of amazing development of the senses, mind and body as they gradually develop the art of sitting, crawling, standing and beginning to walk. They are intensely interested in the humans, events and things around them, but must rely on adults to be tuned into what interests them, make experiences available to them and respond positively to their reactions and needs.
The outdoors is a wonderfully sensorial place for a baby throughout this year, with lots of sensations for the body, things to notice, watch and reach for, objects and materials to touch, feel and handle, sounds both near and far to listen to, and interesting places to be in with an attentive and responsive adult.
Sleeping
Many settings are finding that babies and toddlers sleep better outside in cool, fresh air in flatbed cots or prams. Many children fall asleep more easily and transfer more gently into wakefulness with the gentle mobile of clouds or a leafy branch overhead and the sounds of nature and children playing outdoors. Good clothing and bedding enables young children in Denmark to sleep outside in temperatures going down to -12 degsC!
Rocking and swinging
Babies need to be rocked, finding this motion soothing and stimulating. The experience of rocking and swinging plays an important role in the neurological development of balance and co-ordination, so it is sought out by children throughout childhood. It should be an important element of good outdoor provision for all ages.
Hammocks are a resource that offer a range of gentle swinging motions from birth onwards and are perhaps easier to provide than swings. Rocking chairs and outdoor swing-seats to share with adults are also particularly effective for babies in this year.
Sensorial stimulation
Not only do babies experience their world through movement and sensation - they must work hard to develop these sensory systems so that they become sophisticated and well integrated with each other.
The outdoor world is full of smells, sounds, sights, textures and changing light, air quality and temperatures. The feel of the wind caressing the skin and moving the hair, the sensation of dappled light under a tree, the pleasure of feeling light rain on arms and face, are just a few of the valuable experiences babies can have outdoors. They need to experience the full range of weather conditions throughout the year - suitably clothed, but not over-dressed.
Plants with a range of textures, smells and ways of moving in the wind, such as grasses, lavender, thyme, rosemary and camomile, can provide valuable sensory experiences.
Tummy and back play
It is imperative that babies spend lots of time lying free of restraint on their backs, and especially on their tummies. A great deal of neurological and anatomical development takes place through being in these positions, also allowing babies to play with their feet and work on rolling over.
Depending on weather conditions, babies can lie directly on grass, sand or paving so that they can feel temperature and texture on their body, or they can be more protected with cushioned picnic mats. The number of things to listen to and look at outside will ensure that they enjoy these experiences, especially with an attentive adult on the ground with them.
Looking, gazing, batting, reaching, grabbing
Visual stimulation is vital in the first year of life. The outdoors provides a complex visual landscape that supports development especially well, including turning to and locating sights or sounds, gazing and fixing on an object, tracking moving objects, being able to see things at a distance, developing depth vision and good spatial awareness.
Non-mobile babies need to be put in positions that give them plenty to look at, reach for, bat and grasp. Adults should carry them to interesting places or sit with them to share interest about the environment. Mobile babies should be moving in an interesting landscape with different views and perspectives. Watching older children and the natural world, such as dry leaves blown by the wind, can be fascinating.
Surfaces for crawling
Crawling babies need a variety of surfaces to provide different tactile experiences and on which to develop movement skills. As the baby moves from one surface to another, their attention is brought to the contrasting sensations and the change in how they need to use their body.
Paving is hard, cool, smooth and resistant; grass is warm, soft and firm but may be wet, while sand is soft and yielding. Gravel is sharp and loose but bark is warm, moist and graspable. Tarmac is hard and rough, while decking might be warm and ridged.
Pulling upright, standing and cruising
Babies who are ready to pull themselves upright need pulling up points and graspable surfaces to hold on to, stand at and balance on, and later need a level surface at just the right height to progress to moving sideways. This can be planned for as much outside and indoors: very effective cruising walls can be made from long mounds of tough grass 40-50cm high.
These can also provide the boundaries for a protected outdoor baby area where they can lie, sit and crawl. From this new position, standing babies can delight in watching bigger children in the rest of the outdoor space and build up to taking their first wobbly steps.
TODDLERS
A child's first year is a wonderful time of movement and exploration as they think and understand through moving and using their whole body.
The outdoors is full of interest, with the space and opportunity for movement that they need so much, and providing the first-hand experiences that toddlers need to construct knowledge and understanding.
The one year-old constantly handles and moves materials, intensely curious about the world and ardently discovering how things behave, learning about their own body and finding out what it can do. Spending time outdoors with toddlers is delightful as they share their intense curiosity and bring adults' attention to long-overlooked and forgotten details, especially in the natural world.
Moving in different ways
Toddlers have an enormous need for movement, requiring spaces, adult support and clothing that encourage physical activity (such as appropriate footwear and trousers to allow movement without presenting hazards).
Like crawling babies, toddlers who are mastering locomotion and co-ordination need several kinds of surfaces demanding a range of body control, effort and attention. Once they are past wobbly walking, they need uneven and less predictable surfaces and some that give way a little underfoot, such as grass, paving, sand, gravel, bark, packed earth, decking and even pavements outside the setting.
An outdoor space that has rubber surfacing only is developmentally inadequate for children of this age.
Clambering and going up and down
One-year-olds also love to clamber and are driven to master the art of going up and down. So, they need steps, small changes in levels and slopes with a range of gradients - some easy and some more of a challenge. One-year-olds also revel in being higher up, where they get different perspective and a sense of being 'big'.
Motor control and co-ordination are extremely important for successful life functioning, so bumps and bruises have to be tolerated for toddlers to access enough of this physical exploration.
Swinging, spinning, sliding and bouncing
The need to experience fast motion through space continues all through childhood, but toddlers especially seek out these sensations to wire up the vestibular sensory system that will give them balance, co-ordination and body control throughout life. This age group especially loves to experience motion through physical play with adults, but they also need lots of daily access to swings, slides and roundabouts.
Look for ways to offer turning, spinning and falling sensations in lots of suitably challenging ways for toddlers (supported by attentive adults), at the park as well as in the setting.
Hiding and nurturing
Toddlers need small spaces that provide enclosure, softness and comfort. They enjoy playing hiding games or repeatedly getting in and out of little spaces and finding small places in among plants. Many outdoor areas lack the nurture that these nooks and crannies provide, being seen only as places for energy and 'letting off steam'.
As babies and toddlers move frequently and suddenly from an active state to a need for restoration, it is important to offer places where they can get inside or underneath, places to sit with adults, places where they can stand and watch others, and quieter places away from high activity.
Collecting, handling and transporting, pushing and pulling
Once they are walking, toddlers have their hands free for holding and moving objects, and this becomes a strong feature of their play. Toddlers typically collect and gather, handle and manipulate, fill and empty, lift and carry, push and pull, haul and dump, place, pile and stack.
Provide abundant materials that can be gathered and moved, lots of containers that can be filled, and plenty of vessels with handles or wheels that can be moved and transported. Natural materials, such as pebbles, wood pieces, shells and large seeds have lots of attributes that make them fascinating to toddlers. Baskets, buckets, watering cans, pots, pans, wheelbarrows and vehicles all support these drives, enabling one-year-olds to make the most of being outdoors.
Water and sand
Sand and water are among the very best materials for children of all ages outdoors, being two of the key ingredients of a successful outdoor environment for under-threes. Intensely sensory and easily manipulated, sand and water lend themselves to the pretend play that emerges at this stage in a child's life and develops so much more in two-year-olds.
Outdoors, the child should be able to experience these materials in a whole-bodied, multi-sensory way and be able to move them around and mix them. To enable this, sand needs to be in as large an area as there is space for, and water should be flowing. An outdoor tap for running water is almost essential.
Cause, effect and agency
One-year-olds are intent on discovering how the world works and especially driven to find out what they can make happen in it. An effective outdoor environment must be rich in opportunities for children to experience 'cause and effect'.
Resources to provide include objects to make sounds on or with, and ways to make marks in sand or mud as well as with water, chalk and paint. Taps that turn to allow water to flow and stop and water to mix into sand and soil give satisfying results and provide a powerful sense of control and agency.
TWO-YEAR-OLDS
A child's third year is one of emerging imagination, language and friendships that is greatly supported by spending plenty of time each day in rich outdoor environments. Two-year-old find many things to be fascinated by outdoors and can now express themselves verbally, using language for thinking, communication and influencing people.
They are still highly movementand action-oriented, with great needs for space and freedom, for 'doing' and for first-hand experience. Through these, they construct complex ideas and understandings about how people and the world work. Increasing imagination deriving from real experiences, alongside a growing ability to regulate feelings and behaviour, enables two-year-olds to engage in satisfying pretend play together.
A wide range of movement experiences
Having mastered locomotion, two-year-olds now need an outdoor environment that invites them to engage in skipping, running, climbing, jumping and landing, swinging, rolling, sliding, bouncing and balancing.
Pushing emotional and physical boundaries gives them a great sense of achievement and capability, helps them join in with others and develops resilient 'have a go' dispositions. They also love to sing, dance and play simple games, so practitioners should have a good repertoire of these to draw on whenever the moment is right.
Sand and water - mixing and making
Sand and water are essential ingredients of outdoor provision for this age group. Outdoors, these can be felt with the whole body, dug in with long-handled tools, transferred into containers, watering cans, buckets and wheelbarrows, transported from place to place, mixed and stirred with other materials, and transformed into 'food' and many other imaginary things.
Running water and rain add hugely to the opportunities for exploration and action that are available in a water tray indoors. Jumping in puddles and standing under leaking gutters are also essential outdoor experiences.
Gathering, organising, placing and representing
Two-year-olds still love to collect, fill and transport, so stones, sticks, shells, wood pieces, plant materials and other natural materials make highly effective resources, along with a range of containers and transporters. Now, however, they will increasingly be used to make lines and simple patterns and to represent other things, such as a face with eyes and nose or a plate of food.
The open-ended nature of these materials makes them versatile so that they can be whatever the child's imagination wants them to be. Large and heavy resources, such as logs or small tyres, are excellent for children of this age, especially if they have a fascination for things that turn and roll.
Dens and hidey holes
As friendship develops over this year, two-year-olds really enjoy being able to find small, semi-hidden spaces where they can spend time together away from adults. These little spaces support conversations and emerging pretend 'home' play.
Wise practitioners will give children the time and space to sort out the conflicts that inevitably arise when two-year-olds are together, allowing the desire to play together to drive the development of self-control and social skills. However, children of this age still have a strong need to know that adults are available and looking after their well-being and safety.
Growing things and natural phenomena
Two-year-olds are intensely interested in the natural world, such as hunting for minibeasts, experiencing wind and rain or experimenting with shadows. Their outdoor space needs to be full of curiosity-rich and problem-rich situations, where they can continue to explore how things respond to them and how they can have an influence on their world.
At this age, children will have lots to talk about in such a place, especially with genuinely interested adults who give them time to think and speak. These situations can also be used to help two-year-olds learn how to keep themselves safe and healthy.
Real tasks and the world beyond the setting
Two-year-olds thrive on feeling capable and responsible, and love to 'help' with caring for the outdoor environment. Practitioners should take time to consider how children within this age group could be involved - such as by tidying up, washing windows, sweeping leaves and growing vegetables - and build in the time for this to happen on a routine basis.
While the outdoor area should be a rich sensory and exploratory place, nothing can beat the world of real things, real people and real life beyond this. Another fantastic layer of outdoor provision can be harnessed through taking very small groups on frequent short trips by foot into the nearby locality and community. This works especially well when walks are taken at the child's pace, pausing to investigate all the myriad things that interest them.
THE ADULT ROLE
The most important component of successful outdoor provision is a team of committed and enthusiastic adults, who fully appreciate what the outdoors offers, who are dedicated to getting very young children outdoors for plenty of time, every day, throughout the year, and who overcome the barriers or limitations in their setting.
They enjoy being outside with these children, striving to understand what they are doing and how they are benefiting from being there, and taking pleasure in being with them in this fabulous journey of discovery.
Babies cannot wait for the weather to be nice. And after all, every type of weather holds interest and possibilities for these eager meaning-makers. Children under three need attentive, tuned-in, comfortable and patient adults who follow their agenda and pace, providing the safe base and companionship that enables them to discover everything the outdoors has to offer.
Jan White is an early childhood consultant who works nationally to advocate and support high-quality outdoor provision for children aged from birth to five.
CASE STUDY: Sandfield Natural Play Centre, Merseyside
Sandfield Natural Play Centre, in Whiston, Merseyside, aims to offer all its children, aged from birth to 11, 'curiosity, discovery, wonder, adventure, challenge and a strong sense of belonging'. Babies, toddlers and two-year-olds have their own garden, but often visit siblings and other older children.
Owner/manager Suzanne Scott says, 'Our philosophy and commitment to outdoors is borne out of a shared belief that an outdoor, flexible learning environment allows growth as individuals, strong relationships with others and attachment to the world, and encourages creative and lateral thinking.'
Robust recruitment procedures and ongoing expectations of staff, with close attention to their confidence and comfort outdoors, ensure a high commitment to being outside.
The staff team have taken time to develop with parents a shared vision and values, and parents now choose this setting because of its emphasis on natural outdoor play. Use of ICT for home-shared records, learning stories and interpretive displays deepens staff knowledge and parental engagement. Families are also involved with developments and work in the garden.
Because of good transition areas and procedures, children move between outdoors and indoors whenever they wish. Children can sleep outside and always have appropriate clothing through the year. A suitable insurance policy and strong 'benefit-risk management' approach, ensuring hygiene and safety issues are met, allow children to access a wide range of play in the natural world. There is a focus on open-ended, transformable materials, especially sand, soil, water and plants.
Practitioners and parents witness daily how being outdoors inspires children's action and thinking, supports their happiness and health and encourages both adults and children to take their time and enjoy just being together.
SEATING
Seating is an important element of a good environment for very young children, since adults are best placed to be attentive, engaged and available when they are comfortably sitting down. This will bring the adult's face to the right height and provide that all-important lap.
Several sheltered and comfortable seats, positioned near to where children want to play, helps to mix ages, gives plenty to share interest and means that adults are providing the secure base needed for exploration. From here, adults can observe closely to tune into children's play and show their interest in the child's activity. A climber-covered swing seat is the perfect place to enjoy being outdoors together.
FURTHER INFORMATION
- Nurture through Nature by Claire Warden (Mindstretchers, 2007)
- A Nurturing Environment for Children up to Three by Sindhu Hope (London Borough of Islington, 2007)
- 'Babies Outdoors', 'Toddlers Outdoors', 'Two-Year-Olds Outdoors' from Siren Films (training packs of DVD with accompanying notes by Jan White), available from www.sirenfilms.co.uk
- Nursery World Practice in Pictures series by Anne O'Connor: 4 March, 1 April, 6 May, and 3 June 2010
- The Sky's the Limit: Developing outdoor provision for babies and toddlers by Jan White, Early Education. www.earlyeducation.org.uk
- 'Early Years Outdoors' support for outdoor provision birth to five from Learning through Landscapes, www.ltl.org.uk.
