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Learning through outdoor play is a fundamental need for children, and ‘knowledgeable and enthusiastic adults are crucial to unlocking the potential of outdoors’.1 So, whether you are the ‘newbie’ yourself, or are busy recruiting, here are five ideas for making the most of your new staff member and building confidence and skills at the same time.
1. TAKE A TOUR WITH THE CHILDREN
Help your new colleague familiarise themselves with the outdoor space and the children by inviting small groups of children to lead tours of the area. Ask them to show the new adult their favourite and least favourite spaces, explaining their reasons. Where do they go when it rains, snows or is sunny? Where do the minibeasts live? What’s the best look-out spot? Where’s good for stories? Where are the secret hidey-holes?
A tour, alongside separate observations of children at play outdoors, will help staff understand how children occupy the space, and what the potential is for learning through play. Add an element of mark-making to this by arming children with sticky notes or laminated labels and dry-wipe markers to indicate the places and spaces most important to them.
2. VIEW THE SPACE WITH THEIR FRESH EYES
Your new colleague should carry out a number of outdoor play observations.2 Encourage them to use their ‘fresh eyes’ and observe not just what children are doing but how they move around the space, who they play with, what characterises the play and how absorbed and engaged children are in their play. Use these insights to help identify opportunities for improvements to the way outdoors is used, resourced and managed.
3. BENEFIT/RISK
Staying safe is a priority outdoors – but not at the cost of eliminating risk and challenge, which are essential elements of a healthy childhood. Even the Health and Safety Executive states that it ‘recognises that play brings the world to life for children. It provides for an exploration and understanding of their abilities; helps them to learn and develop; and exposes them to the realities of the world in which they will live, which is a world not free from risk but rather one where risk is ever present. The opportunity for play develops a child’s risk awareness and prepares them for their future lives.’3
All staff members should be familiar with the concept of benefit/risk assessment; ask your new colleague to evaluate outdoors against the benefit/risk criteria.4
Adults’ ability to risk assess dynamically (i.e. on the hoof) is crucial for free-flowing, adventurous, supported play, and a new staff member can provide alternative perspectives and challenge your embedded thinking around risk in play.
It will also build their own confidence as they get to know the interactions and behaviours outdoors.
4. READ AND RESEARCH
There is an abundance of information and advice about outdoor play available via books, blogs, magazines and websites – there’s even #outdoorplay on Twitter, where settings all over the globe share ideas and images. With lots for the new colleague to absorb, the two crucial issues to focus on for outdoors are understanding the importance of outdoor play (how it is different from but complementary to play indoors) and how you as adults can maximise the potential of outdoors. Here are some starting points:
Book: Playing and Learning Outdoors by Jan White (Routledge 2013) provides a thorough background to both of these issues.
Website: Learning through Landscapes – www.ltl.org.uk – contains hundreds of downloadable resources covering the use, design and management of early years outdoor spaces.
Blog: Creative Star – www.creativestarlearning.co.uk/blog – promotes a joyful approach to outdoor learning.
Inspiration: See my Pinterest boards, where I hoard ideas for outdoor learning/play – www.pinterest.co.uk/PLLoutdoors.
Planning outdoors: Download Nursery World’s ‘7Cs’ series on planning your outdoor area (see ‘Character building’, ‘In context’, ‘Clear thinking’ and ‘Leap at the chance’ at www.nurseryworld.co.uk) – explaining how this innovative approach to designing and organising outdoors can really exploit its potential for supporting children’s well-being and development.
Guidance: See the Health and Safety Executive’s statement on risk and challenge in children’s play at: www.hse.gov.uk/entertainment/childrens-play-july-2012.pdf
5. VISIT OTHER SETTINGS
It’s likely that an induction programme for a new staff member will include visits to local settings, particularly if you are part of a local network feeding into the primary schools. Remind all colleagues, but particularly newly qualified ones, to observe children at play outdoors at other settings, not just indoors.
Thinking about the steps the new colleague has taken (see above), what comparisons can they make? In what ways can you learn from outdoor practice at other settings? What advice can you offer them? Could you ‘resource swap’ in order to reinvigorate play at both settings?
REFERENCES
1. From ‘A Shared Vision and Values for Outdoor Play in the Early Years’, http://bit.ly/2FJSqGz
2. ‘dynamic’ benefit/risk assessment documents
3. www.hse.gov.uk/entertainment/childrens-play-july-2012.pdf
4. See no2.
