OUTDOOR PHILOSOPHY
And at the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair messy and your eyes sparkling.
- Shanti
Fostering a love of Nature
In a world where children are spending increasingly less amounts of time outdoors we are committed to providing them with opportunities to re-discover the wonders of nature. Outside, children have access to a forever changing environment, where they can experience the natural rhythms of the seasons and the world they live in. Outside experiences instil in children a love of nature while providing them with lifelong learning skills that support their future development and responsibility in taking care of our world.
Nature has no Boundaries
Being outside in nature is beneficial for everyone, regardless of gender, ethnicity, ability or age. It enables children to learn through all of their senses by providing them with unlimited open-ended opportunities and possibilities – which is exactly the way children and our brains want to learn.
Safe but with Challenges
Although we are committed to providing a safe environment by removing hazards from our outdoor area, we are also committed to ensuring that children are able to learn about and take risks. During this sort of play and exploration children learn about themselves in relation to the real world, about their bodies and ways to keep themselves and others safe. It also builds their capacity to feel confident, independent, strong and self-assured.
Supporting multiple Skills and Dispostions
Spending time outdoors offers children the opportunity to improve their understanding of numeracy, literacy, science, environmental and sustainable practices. Outdoors is also a space for children to explore and improve their own levels of persistence, problem solving and curiosity. The range of naturally occurring features in our outdoor environments challenge children to be creative, resourceful and imaginative – a gumnut is a spaceship in the right hands!
Supporting Mental and Physical Health
There is a wealth of research that supports the benefits of spending time outdoors and engaging with nature, such as improvements to memory and our immune system. For children to learn, first they must move. Aside from the physical benefits of spending time immersed in nature, outdoor time maximises a child’s opportunity to self-regulate, and to build important life-long learning skills such as concentration, commitment and focus.
Children have the Right to Choose and Make Decisions
Acknowledging the importance for children to have time to explore and deepen their play and learning, we ensure that children are always offered the choice to be either indoors or outdoors. Providing children with the opportunity to make choices and to experience the outcomes of those choices helps to strengthen their sense of autonomy in the context of their relationship with others and with the world around them.
