Nature play as in Natural play. This refers to interacting with natural elements of the environment in an imaginative way. It’s essential to children’s development to play with unstructured play activities while playing in a outdoors environment, children can play with natural elements which they resource themselves, these things could include logs, rocks, leaves or water instead of manufactured play equipment.
What are the benefits?
Outdoor play helps foster children’s intellectual, emotional, social and physical development. While being surrounded by nature and even just being outside, children experience an environment that stimulates all the senses.
Emotional Benefits– Children are free to explore and make noise while playing outside as it doesn’t restrict all delightful forms of self-expression that are often restricted indoors. When playing outside in nature, children can run, jump, hop, skip, climb, roll, and shout, which relaxes, and reduces tension, anxiety, and restlessness.
Social Benefits– When children play outdoors there may be opportunities to interact with new and different playmates. In nature, children can play alone or connect with one another, learn to share, and problem solve.
Physical benefits-The fresh air of the natural world is invigorating and offers endless opportunities for physical activity, which, in turn, builds strong bodies. Exposure to sunlight means children absorb vitamin D which has many positive benefits, including contributing to a strong immune system.
What does it look like in the classroom?
Our environmental yard with real grass lends itself nicely to nature play.
Our Little Fish friends went out in the environmental yard to stimulate all 7 senses. Click on our previous blog to read in depth about the 7 senses. Yes! you read that correctly, there are 7 not 5 senses. https://brightkidscentre.com.au/sensory-play-with-babies/
We enjoyed:
- Sitting and crawling on the grass – vestibular, tactile, sight, smell;
- Collected and smelled leaves – vision, olfactory, tactile, auditory, vestibular;
- Splashing around in the shallow shell pool – touch, auditory, vestibular, vision; and
- Practised being present by listening to the birds chirping and watching them fly- vision and auditory.
Following our environmental exploration we stayed outside and brought our lunch to the outdoors, who doesn’t love a picnic lunch?!
Ways to implement nature play at home
- Go for a walk to the park, beach or lake- let your baby look, see, feel and hear different things around them.
- Lay a mat on the ground- allow your baby/ child to see the world in a different way they could also lay just off the mat and feel the ground (grass, sand or mud).
- Collect natural items from outside – place them in a basket for your baby to feel.
- Messy play- sand pit, mud play, water play.
That’s all this month from Miss Jess, Miss Tash and the Little Fish (Jalumm) children
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