Child’s play
A few things I’ve learned about outDoor Education for children
The other day, in between the chaos of cooking and eating dinner with our toddler, I was talking with my partner about how important it is for kids to spend time in nature and how we should try to facilitate this for our son, also during school hours. Unfortunately, it seems that the time spent outdoors in schools is extremely limited, especially in winter. And that is such a shame, because beside the well-known benefits of spending time in nature, it’s a truly fun thing to do, both for adults and little ones!
In collaboration with the Parents Association of an international school,I have recently been leading the “Nature Hour’’ for young kids after school, ‘my students’ being well under the age of 7.
Although I am not new to ‘educating’, this is the first time that I am collaborating with a school and that I have children of such a young age. Therefore, a few months into this project, I would like to share some insights and thoughts. I am aware that the world of nature/outdoor education is wide and full of great examples and literature to get inspiration from, thus I am not here to say ‘my way is the way’. I simply would like to share my personal experience.
Somewhere in spring 2024, I was asked by the Parents Association to help out organising one activity for the summer camp hosted by their school. For this workshop, I had ‘carte blanche’ on the type of activity but I needed to be flexible because I had groups of very small children (4-5 years old) as well as groups with older ones (6 to 8 years old). I decided to create a ‘gigantic board game’, with boxes which you could land on by throwing a ‘gigantic dice’. The theme I chose for the activity was ‘the animals of the forests’ and under each card there was an educational game or small challenge dedicated to different animals and their ecology.
One-time workshops are fun, because you dedicate all your focus and energy to one chosen activity and usually the attention to details makes the difference. The down part is that you spend resources designing a one-off game which you don’t know if you will be able to use again. Anyway, this summer camp workshop turned out to be so fun for everyone that they asked me to come back and organize a ‘Nature Hour’ for the after school kids programme throughout the scholastic year.
Nature Hour with the Nature Teacher
Organizing activities on a weekly basis is more challenging than preparing a one-off workshop. When designing my programme I decided to take into consideration a few fundamental aspects:
I wanted it to be fun, both for me and for the children.
I wanted the activities to be educational and to use my ecological knowledge
I wanted it to be low-cost using the material I already had around.
I wanted a long term perspective: I asked myself what my purpose was in all of this. What did I want to achieve with these activities?
Keeping these core points in mind, I started to research, collect and design a number of activities which I thought had the greatest chances to be successful. I have spent hours looking into examples of outdoor games and educating myself by learning from more experienced educators. For example, Cityplot Amsterdam has a long-standing experience in leading children and school groups into urban gardening and nature exploration (check this out https://www.cityplot.org/children-amsterdam).
It does help a lot that the school is situated inside a beautiful park, on the outskirts of the city. Woods, mushrooms, leaves, branches… we have it all there! Whenever I needed to use extra material, I tried to recycle what I already had or to buy second hand (or ask our friends’ bakery for egg cartons and used plastic buckets).
As I mentioned before, I’m relatively new to this type of work but I feel my learning curve has been progressing quickly. After a few months of working with nature and children, these are some personal thoughts:
Educating children outdoors is easier than indoors
I knew that by working with small kids I had to be flexible and allow the energy of the day to flow. Children don’t filter their emotions, so if it’s a ‘bad day’ and they don’t accept instructions too well, then the activity I had planned may not work out. Sometimes they are tired, overloaded with energy and tensions, and they just need to run free or to play hide-and-seek in the trees with few rules. And that is fine too! What I sure realized after these months is that educating children outdoors is easier than indoors. There is always so much to play with: the mud becomes ice cream and the stones are pancakes. The ‘difficult children’, the ones that the teachers struggle to keep calm in the classroom, are usually particularly creative and enthusiastic. Every time I have the Nature Hour I am not sure how the rest of the day will turn out, but it is totally fine because we work together with the emotions of the children, not against them.
Nevertheless, some days are easier than others
There have been days when collecting sticks with a basket around the garden has been the most liked and appreciated activity by the children. And other days where the well-organized challenge of ‘building your own scarecrow’ became a total drama because communication within the play teams did not work out. Sometimes everything comes easy, sometimes it’s simply not the right day.
Storytelling is a great help, especially with the small children
Children (and adults) love stories, and I found that by starting the day with a story helps the group to understand why we are going to do that particular thing. This works more with the small children. Older children (7/8 years old) love the competitions, and when challenged they can take the task seriously (even too seriously sometimes! Drama is always behind the corner☺).
Sticking to the rule “go out, no matter the weather” can be more
difficult than expected
It’s easy to be outside when the sun is shining and the temperature is mild. The real challenge is to go out when every bit of your body is asking you to stay inside! I am THAT person who usually says ‘there is no bad weather, only bad clothing’, but I must admit that I also found it difficult to deal with some extreme weather conditions (maybe it’s just that I am getting old). This winter has been extremely wet and cold here in Belgium and I am looking forward to spring. In the meantime, I need to develop a plan for when very bad weather happens.
Growing plants will be our long-term mission
I really enjoy playing with the kids simply for the fun of it, but I’ve come to realize that I’d like to bring more continuity to our educational activities. With that in mind, I decided to ask for permission from the school to start a small vegetable garden. My idea is to create a few garden elements using the permaculture design, with the goal of involving the children in maintaining them. This is still a work-in-progress proposal, but I’m hopeful we’ll get the green light to start building something more long-term and meaningful.
A closing message
I do believe that being an educator is an important task, because when you are teaching something, you cannot ‘simply’ be passionate about the subject of your ‘lessons’, you also need to be passionate about the art of teaching itself.
There is an old Greek proverb that says: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” I don’t dare to compare my actions with any sort of stoic ancient wisdom, and I surely don’t consider myself as an ‘old man’☺ but when I am doing ‘nature stuff’ together with children I feel I am ‘one of those’ planting the trees for the future generations. Since I truly believe that a greener consciousness in future adults will lead us to a greater society, here I am, trying to involve kids into the magic of the outdoors, like many other nature lovers.
by Giulia Variara, Belgium coordinator and nature guide