Playing and Learning Outdoors

The Practical Guide and Sourcebook for Excellence in Outdoor Provision and Practice with Young Children

Jan White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429890741
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Fully updated to reflect the current status and understandings regarding outdoor provision within early childhood education frameworks across the UK, this new edition shows early years practitioners how to get the very best from outdoor play and learning for the enjoyment, health and education of young children up to age seven.

This invaluable resource gives sound practical guidance for providing:

• play with water, sand and other natural materials;

• experiences with plants, growing and living things;

• movement and physical play;

• construction, imaginative and creative play; and

• explorations into the locality and community just beyond your garden.

This full-colour third edition has been further developed to act as a comprehensive source book of relevant materials, books and resources supporting the core ingredients of high-quality outdoor provision, while each chapter also includes extensive collections of children's picture books relating to the themes within each chapter.

Playing and Learning Outdoors has become the essential practical guide to excellence in outdoor provision and pedagogy for all early years services. This lively, inspiring and accessible book will help every educator to develop truly successful and satisfying approach to learning through play outdoors for every child.

Chapter 1

Providing for play with water outdoors

What this chapter is about

• Why take water play outdoors?
• Providing water outdoors
• Clothing for water play
• Selecting resources for water play
• Storing water play resources
• Playing with water in containers
• Playing with moving water
• Playing with the rain
• Mixing water with other materials
• Children's books, rhymes and songs
• Further information and resources

Why take water play outdoors?

Water is a magical, intriguing and soothing substance to which young children are strongly drawn, and it has always been considered to be an important ingredient of early years provision, as a powerful medium for wellbeing and learning. However, provision indoors usually has to be contained within a water tray, and we need to manage activity in order to control splashes and spillage. While there are many good resources for exploring and playing with the water in a tray, children can have contact with it only through their eyes and hands, which limits the sensory information being sent to their developing brain. Practitioners will also have noticed how much children enjoy the feel and look of water coming out of a tap, such as when washing their hands. Running water has even more to offer for play and learning, but this is often quite a challenge to provide for children in an indoor environment and often results in adults having to constrain and restrain children from doing what they really want to do with the water – hence our difficulties with children's enthusiasm for ‘flooding the bathroom’!

Offering water outdoors hugely extends the way in which children can interact with and experience it. The greater space offers plenty of freedom for movement and large-scale investigations, and flowing water is easy to provide outdoors. Children can move water from one place to another or see how it can make objects move, and there need be no concern for spills and mess. They can explore how water behaves and how it changes surfaces and substances, being wonderfully inventive and imaginative with their ideas, experiments and theories. With suitable clothing, children can play with water throughout the year, interacting with it using their whole body and all their senses. Water is very much part of our everyday lives, and through the weather it affects how each day feels: investigating and exploring water during or after rain is even more multi-sensory and further supports young children in their quest to make sense of the world around them.

Providing water outdoors

General resources for water play

• Large closed container for transporting water, perhaps with a wheeled trolley
• Outdoor tap with stop-cock or removable handle
• Hose on reel with connectors for tap
• Additional hose plus connector attachments
• Water butt with tap and secure lid
• Rain clothes and wellington boots for children and adults
• Rack for hanging wet outdoor clothing up to drain and dry
• Storage rack for organising wellingtons in an accessible manner
• Small rubber gloves for children in colder weather (children's rubber gardening gloves work quite well)
• Water trays and large open containers for play

It is important to think about how the water play you offer outdoors builds on and complements the experiences children have indoors in your setting and at home. Sometimes, simply offering similar experiences with a large water container outdoors can be a good starting point, but do encourage the children to make good use of this different environment. Children will quickly become aware that they can fill containers and transport them around the outdoor space, because spilling water does not matter in the way it does indoors. They will also realise that they can use the water to cover surfaces or mix with substances such as sand and soil. It is very likely also that they will want to bring things to add them to the water in the tray or to ‘wash’ them.

In order to provide ample water for these activities, you will need a large closed container to carry the water from indoors – camping suppliers will have a range to choose from. A wheeled porter's trolley for moving crates and boxes helps to make transporting such containers easier and safer.

If children are to make the most of water play outdoors, however, settings really need to consider installing an outdoor water tap or running a hose pipe from an indoor tap to the outdoor area (connectors for indoor taps can be found in hardware stores), so that plenty of water is easily available every day, whenever it is wanted. An outdoor water tap is an important fixture to consider when designing new or refurbished provision as it will support several aspects of outdoor provision, especially growing plants. It is useful to include a stop-tap in the indoor piping so that the water supply cannot be turned on from outside out of hours. An alternative is to use a tap that is removable when not in use. (However, these can be easily mislaid!) Garden centres supply long hoses on reels which can either be fixed to a wall or used on a stand; those with wheels can easily be moved to where they are needed. If necessary, join two long hoses together with a fixing kit, also available at any garden centre, so that your hose can easily reach wherever you need it.

If it is not possible to install a tap or hose, a water butt with a secure lid makes a good alternative. This needs to be raised 30–50 centimetres above the ground so that children can fit containers under the tap to fill them. Because microbes will develop in this water if left to stand for more than a few days and as children are quite likely to drink it as they play, it is prudent to fill the butt with fresh tap water for a play session, emptying older water onto your growing plants each day. Most children are strongly drawn to experiencing the cause-and-effect operation of the tap to fill containers, and frequent use will build finger strength and dexterity as well as providing fascination for children interested in rotation and things that turn.

Do not forget the source of water that is so often available for fun and finding out anywhere in the UK – rain! With umbrellas and good rain clothes, there are many ways of exploring it directly or through investigating what is left behind after the rain has fallen.

Clothing for water play

In order to keep fully engaged in water play outdoors for any length of time, children need suitable clothing so that they stay comfortable. Since it is children's feet, legs and tummies that get wettest, a combination of wellingtons and dungarees is ideal for most of the year, adding a jacket on colder days. In hot weather, the best approach is to have some large towels to hand and to ensure children have a change of clothes in the setting. For water play that completely liberates children, try all-in-one rain-suits with hoods. These tend to be lightweight and easy to move in, while allowing children to spray each other or tip water onto their heads. They can also be packed away into a small crate or kit bag for easy storage.

An important part of enjoyable and extended water play is that children's hands do not get cold, but suitable small gloves can be hard to find. Many garden centres now stock rubberised children's gloves for gardening that will go a long way to keeping hands warm and functioning in colder weather. Remember also that feet in unlined wellingtons get very cold in the winter months, and warm socks are needed too: fleece-lined waterproof snow boots are a better option. Look for boots that come high enough up the leg to allow standing and jumping in puddles – elasticated rain trouser legs over the tops of boots can help to reduce leakage also.

It is quite important to give children the task of washing down muddy clothing and hanging them up to dry so that they are made ready for the next time. This is most fun when done by hosing down children while they are still wearing their raingear! Involving children in managing their wet or muddy clothes is clearly valuable for developing children's sense of ownership of the outdoor provision, building a sense of responsibility, capability and independence and providing meaningful learning experiences. Time, organisation, expectations and adult patience all need to be considered so that children gradually take on this role and can gain the most from it.

Selecting resources for water play

There are many resources that can enhance children's explorations of water outdoors. Keep reminding yourself about what is special about the outdoors that is not available or possible indoors (such as space, scale, movement, mess, climate and stimuli from the real world) so that what you offer extends indoor water play provision rather than duplicating it. As the seasons and the weather change over the year, water will feel different and activities are likely to be influenced, constantly adding new dimensions. Some resources need to be available outdoors all the time, as part of daily continuous provision, so that children can always have opport...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Being, playing and learning outdoors in early childhood
• 1 Providing for play with water outdoors
• 2 Providing natural materials outdoors
• 3 Providing experiences of the living world outdoors
• 4 Providing for movement and physical play outdoors
• 5 Providing for imaginative, creative and expressive play outdoors
• 6 Providing for construction and den play outdoors
• 7 Providing outdoor experiences beyond the garden
• Index