Natural Playscapes

Last month I talked about Nature Deficit Disorder and its potential harm toward children’s wellbeing. Awareness of this problem, thanks in part to Richard Louv, has led to the increased popularity of natural playscapes. A natural playscape incorporates nature into its outdoor learning environment.

Cheryl Charles, CEO and co-founder of the Children & Nature Network, commented: “These play areas are appealing to children and their families. Different kinds of flowers, bushes and plantings add a sense of beauty and place and are very stimulating for kids’ intellectual, emotional, social and physical development.” Moreover, “Academic achievement is enhanced when kids get nature-based settings and there’s an improvement in standardized test scores if outdoor learning is part of a school’s curriculum” (italics mine).

Kaija Clark (2010), author of “Is Nature the Next Wave in Playground Accessibility?” added to Charles’ beliefs, stating “In fact, time outside has been shown to help increase cognitive ability, something that might help multiplication-weary children. Brief stints to stretch their legs on a nature walk ease tension and enable kids to regain focus for more intensive learning when they return to the classroom” (italics mine).

Clearly natural playscapes are here to stay. If you’d like to learn more about designing one for your outdoor classroom, just click here.

Art: Weaving Panel (Part 4 of 4)

The Adventurous Child likes to create products and equipment that are multipurpose in nature. A great example of this is our weaving panel: It encourages artistic development, use of prepositional phrases, and it promotes cooperative play!

Children can intertwine various materials through a weaving panel, such as ribbon, yarn and string. This unique piece of children’s playground equipment allows children to use their imaginations to create an artistic design with the weaving materials. Using a weaving panel demonstrates directional words (in, out, on, off, here and there) as well as spatial relationships with objects (over, under, beside and through). Children can work independently or they can work cooperatively by passing the material back and forth through a weaving panel.

Art: Color Wheel (Part 2 of 4)

The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.Hans Hofmann - Artist

Consider adding a color wheel to your outdoor classroom. Its unique design allows children to mix sunlight with primary colors to create secondary colors. One of the wheels remains in a fixed position while the other wheel turns. As the child turns the wheel and the light shines through, different colors are created. For example, when the light flashes through the yellow and blue sections, green is produced.



The color wheel is a great addition to your outdoor classroom. After discussing color with your children, encourage them to draw or paint pictures displaying their favorite hues. On Thursday we’re going to take a look at The Adventurous Child’s art easel – the next great step for budding artists!

Art (Part 1 of 4)

Art is not just ornamental, an enhancement of life. It is a path in itself, a way out of the predictable and conventional... a map to self discovery. (Gabrielle Roth)

To wrap up our series on fine arts, we’re going to look at visual art this week. The Adventurous Child wants to help you create a wonderful outdoor “studio” for discussing and creating art with your children. Studying art is integral to teaching children about color, perspective, composition, and encouraging imagination and passion. As Gabrielle Roth said, art is “a map to self discovery.” With a few pieces of equipment, you will give your children all the tools they need to learn about the world and themselves.

On Monday we are going to look at the color wheel… but if you’re ready to mix some colors today, just click here!

The Nitty Gritty: Gravel Panel (Part 4 of 4)

Add a gravel panel to the truck pit for increased learning and fun in your outdoor classroom. The Adventurous Child’s Gravel Panel Add-On provides three different ways for the gravel to shoot through and fill the trucks and containers below. Pouring gravel through the gravel panel allows children to observe and demonstrate directional words—in, out, on, off, here, there, beside, next to and between. (These prepositions will surely lead to a wonderful conversation about keeping the gravel in the pit!)

The Nitty Gritty: Truck Pit (Part 3 of 4)

There are so many things to do in the truck pit! Children love digging, pouring, sifting, sorting, counting and manipulating pea gravel in the truck pit. Animals aren’t attracted to the pea gravel, so unlike sand, the gravel doesn’t have to be covered. The 9-inch-wide wide roads, hills and tunnels of the truck pit are large enough to accommodate medium sized Tonka trucks and set the stage for dramatic play. A great addition to any outdoor play area, children will love traveling the roadways, hills and tunnels of the truck pit.

Everyone at The Adventurous Child agrees, a truck pit is the way to go for equal parts entertaining and educational!

Back to School (Part 1 of 4)

Chalk dust! Art supplies! Curriculum! Recess! Yes, it time to head back to school. Whether classes have already started, or you have a few more weeks to prepare, now is a great time to think about your plans for the school year. Everyone at The Adventurous Child is so excited for a new year!

Over the next couple weeks, I will be talking about some products that will make the back-to-school transition go smoothly. (First up: the Teacher’s Organizational Post!)

However, before we talk product, let’s talk goals. What would you like to do differently this year? Is there a teaching method or activity you would like to try? At the end of the school year, what lessons or answers do you want your students to walk away with?

Sasha Azevedo, an American athlete, once remarked: “We can teach from our experience, but we cannot teach experience.”

Let’s make this the year of experience for our children. Make this the year that you teach and learn through creation, demonstration, and observation. Play outside, conduct experiments, and engage in nature. Experience the world together.

Food for Thought

There are some who argue that the benefits of early childhood education disappear by third grade. Steve Barnett, co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) replied to this claim:

“Absolutely not! A new NIEER study that provides an objective summary of all the research on preschool education’s effects finds substantial positive effects on achievement, special education, grade retention, and social behavior at ages 10 and higher. This is really the last nail in the coffin of the idea that preschool effects disappear at third grade. If you look at all the research – don’t cherry pick for results – it shows that long-term effects are robust even if smaller than initial effects. The idea that preschool effects fade out by third grade originated with one flawed study in the early 1960s, and this belief continues to be propagated by those who cite a few methodologically weak newer studies.”


So, the next time you’re wondering if you are making a difference, rest assured: You ARE.

Cause and Effect

If you were to sit down with a group of toddlers and preschoolers, and announce that you will be spending the morning discussing cause and effect relationships, perspective, and self awareness, what sort of responses would you receive? Probably some blank stares and a total lack of interest.

But if you were to take the children outside, and allow them to stand in front of a mirror, what would happen? The children would enjoy studying the reflection of their bodies in the outdoor mirror, as well as the things that surround them. By looking at the mirror, they will be learning:

· Cause and effect (if they move their bodies, the mirror will reflect those movements)
· Perspective (their size will change depending on their distance from the mirror)
· Self awareness (viewing themselves in a new context)

Visit The Adventurous Child here to learn more about the mirror panel and what children will learn by playing with it - or should we say, in front of it!

Gardening Tips for Children

“The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil” – Rachel Carson

These summer days, full of ripened fruits and vegetables in the farmers’ markets and grocery stores, have us thinking about planting our own garden. This is absolutely something you can do with your children!

Stephanie from The Adventurous Child is our go-to garden expert. Here are some of her tips for exploring nature with children:

Teach them the ground rules for exploring nature and gardening
Take only things that won't harm the environment
Avoid picking wild flowers and breaking branches
Respect
Plan for your garden
Will you plant things you can eat?
Will you plant flowers to beautify?
Consult with Drug and Poison Control about your plant choices
How much sun will the area get?
How close is the water source?
Will the garden area be safe from the mainstream of play traffic?
Limit the duration of the task
Work with small groups
Wear old clothing

Stop back on Monday to find out what gardening products we carry. Of course, if you’re really itching to pull out your shovel and soil, click here for more information.

Staying Healthy and Using the Outdoors

Physical fitness is becoming a part of many preschool curriculums and state early learning standards. Some of the findings show that simply having pathways for children to walk on keeps them moving and increases fitness levels. To help create pathways that keep children moving, the outdoor play area can simply have stepping stones going from one learning center to the next. There are other types of activities that can also be used as connectors such as multi-level balance beams, stepping pods, or a simple chalk line to walk on.
Programming our children into sports or simply providing 30 minutes of physical fitness exercise has not worked in improving our children’s health. The main difference between children today and children in the past is that children in the past moved continuously: walking from one friend’s house to another, playing in the neighborhood, etc. They were not necessarily running and jumping, just moving all day long. So creating outdoor environments that keep them moving is the best thing we can do for their health.

Create a City Outdoors

A preschool playground is a great place to set up a city. Creating a city outdoors is a wonderful thing that can be done simply with cardboard boxes. Children can decorate the boxes and cut out doors and windows. Then you can put these items along your bike path. Name your streets and label them, which will help with literacy. By using signs such as crosswalk, stop, railroad, and yield signs, children will have an opportunity to meet the early learning standard of recognizing environmental print. Take chalk outside and have children actually chalk crosswalks and parking spaces onto your concrete surfaces. They can even create a wheelchair spot, mimicking real life parking lots. Have fun with your bike path and incorporate it into your playground as if it were a city street. Let me hear your comments about unique things you have done with your bike path.

Can you create a woodworking center outdoors?

Absolutely! Woodworking is a great part of the preschool curriculum. To help bring the outdoors alive, you can set up a small workbench and a few simple tools for children to use. Several programs I work with begin their woodworking curriculum right after Halloween every year. They take their leftover pumpkins and use them as something soft to hammer nails into for the first time. Large head roofing nails are easy nails to target with a hammer. When children master this they can move on to wood. At The Adventurous Child we also recommended that people use Styrofoam and golf tees as a beginning way to practice targeting and woodworking with children. I recommend having a woodworking center outdoors simply because it is a very noisy, very dusty activity, so the noise and dust can be left outdoors.

Can literacy be taught in the outdoor classroom?

There are many ways to bring literacy outside. Simply labeling and naming everything allows children to practice whole language. Have children make their own signs and tape them onto objects. One of my favorite things has been watching children journal outdoors and seeing what they view in the world versus what I view in the world. They tend to be more interested in the small spiders, squirrels and other creatures in the environment, where an adult tends to look more at the overall scenery.

Another way to provide literacy outdoors is using bookcases and art cases. A bookcase is simply anything that you create that is watertight and can be left outdoors so that children can access books or art supplies to do journaling or tell stories. The Adventurous Child actually has a bookcase/art case which is watertight and lockable with padlocks. Send me your ideas or comment on this blog with ideas of things that you could label outdoors, etc.

Music and the Outdoors

The Adventurous Child believes children benefit from music in the outdoor classroom. The main problem we find with doing music outdoors is that the instruments have to be made in such a way that vandals cannot damage or destroy the sounds the instruments make. Many playground musical instruments are not tuned and do not have contrasting sounds. This defeats the purpose of having music outside. Creating a chime panel that has a full scale and where each pipe on the panel is tuned allows children to hear the correct note and for a musically inclined person to actually play a song. For drums or drum panels, having contrasting sounds between each drum allows the children to discriminate between the sounds. Using flat aluminum bars, properly tuned, to create a xylophone is another excellent way to give children real instruments outdoors. Providing music outdoors helps create a classroom environment and adds interesting activities for children to use.

Can math be done better outdoors than indoors?

During the preschool years, a lot of math deals with classifying and categorizing objects into groups and sets. What better place than the outdoors to classify natural items such as grass, rocks, sticks, leaves and any other items that can be manipulated. An example would be a box full of rocks. If children are provided with a pile of rocks of different and varying sizes, they could use it to meet the early learning standards by taking rocks and sorting them by size, shape, color, weight, etc. Once they have classified their rocks, they could actually break them into sets of similar items, and add and subtract rocks from the sets. I have been amazed over the years observing children who know nothing about early learning standards, who do not know anything about math, but are simply sitting and playing and they naturally sort and classify rocks or any other object. The Adventurous Child provides a container called a Truck Pit, which holds ⅜” diameter pea gravel and smaller, for children to do exactly this. Please contact me or comment on other things that you know children can manipulate outdoors and how they use it to practice the early learning standards and math.

What can be done better outdoors than indoors? Part 2

Loud, noisy items are wonderful things to use outdoors. Children do not have to use their quiet indoor voices; they can whoop and holler and express themselves in different ways out on the playground than they can indoors. Musical instruments are a wonderful thing outside. They emit soft and loud noises and allow children to express themselves using different tools that make sounds. Large drum sets on the playground that make deep, bass sounds create both a sensory input from vibration of the instrument as well as the sound. Drums can also be make from pots and pans that may be in your cooking area. Chime panels and xylophones provide another opportunity for children to actually play and hear the notes in a full scale. There are many Early Learning Standards that are met by allowing children to use musical instruments and play and make loud sounds and noises. A good reference for which Early Learning Standards are met by using musical instruments is on The Adventurous Child’s web site. What ways have you seen children make sounds outdoors?

What can be done better outdoors than indoors?

For today’s blog, I am going to focus on messy things and why it is so much better to do them outdoors. I think of a preschool art easel and how much work teachers go to indoors, taping newspaper on the walls and the floors to make sure if children splatter paint or spill things, they can easily clean up the space. Outdoors, if we are using a biodegradable paint, there is no need for this. We can simply let the paint hit the grass and biodegrade. Also, when it comes to clean up with an outdoor art easel, you just take your water hose and squirt it down. Sensory tables frequently have messy items put in them that require clean up after use. Many times the items we put in a sensory table are biodegradable, such as bird seed, cornmeal, oats, etc. Take messy sensory table activities outdoors, so when children spill things the local birds and creatures will clean up after them. This brings wildlife to your playground, which is another important asset to an outdoor classroom. If you have ideas or questions on things that can be done better outdoors, please comment or contact me.

“Can children learn more about the weather by discussing it outdoors each day?”

Weather is an abstract concept when discussed from the confines of an indoor classroom. Outdoors weather can be a concrete learning experience that provides interaction with all of a child’s senses. A child can hear the wind, feel the wind, and see trees swaying in the wind. Air actually has a smell just before it rains, while rain affects all senses.

Items needed to create a great outdoor preschool weather station might include: thermometer, rain gauge, barometer, weather vane, and a place to record the weather at different times of the day. Each day at the end of outdoor play time, use the weather learning center as a transition point before going inside. Discuss the temperature, is it cloudy or sunny, will it rain based on the barometer, etc. The Adventurous Child web site has a great list of Early Learning Standards that pertain to the weather.

Please send me your ideas or questions on creating an outdoor classroom for preschool children.

“What do we want children to gain on the preschool playground? Are these the same things they gain outdoors?”

Yes, in many ways the goals of what we want children to learn in the outdoor classroom are the same as the inside classroom. The Adventurous Child would like to see children develop socially, emotionally, cognitively, physically, etc. in outdoor settings where there is nature and movement all around.


One important area of the preschool curriculum is providing social experiences which create cooperation and parallel play. Having quiet gathering areas like a willow hut, a playhouse, or a store front puts children in situations where they interact with each other. These learning centers really come alive with the buzzing of busy children when manipulatives are provided. The playhouse can have dress up clothes for social and dramatic play. Fake money to buy and sell things also provides manipulatives. A willow hut can have pots and pans for cooking a group’s favorite mud stew with meat sticks. Bits of grass can be used for anything.


When choosing manipulatives to create social interaction, pick items that help you meet your state’s Early Learning Standards. If you want to know more about something specific please feel free to comment or to contact me.