Outdoor Experiences
We deeply value play embedded in the natural world. Our naturalized playgrounds invite children to engage with sand, water, mud, climbing structures, bikes, and open spaces for running and collaboration. Children spend about half their day outside, experiencing rich sensory and motor activities in all kinds of weather.
We also have access to the woods surrounding our campus, maintained by one of our parent committees. All classes, including toddlers, visit the woods weekly to foster a deep connection with nature.
Outdoor learning spaces provide instructional space that provides more open-ended cognitive challenges. Nature presents many novel problems that stimulate children’s thinking:
Nature presents many novel problems that stimulate children's thinking:
- how to water the middle of the garden
- how to drain the puddle on the slide,
- what to think of the new chrysalis on the butterfly bush,
- what can be discovered while digging in the dirt, or
- how to negotiate uneven terrain.
Nature also allows more opportunity for childhood activities that are:
- messy (mud, paint, bubbles),
- loud (shrieking, drumming, hammering) and
- ebullient (dancing, flailing, gesticulating).
Research shows that time in nature enhances mental health, physical well-being, and social skills. Outdoor play also encourages positive social interactions and enriches the complexity of child-led activities like obstacle courses mock-work routines and play scripts.
In nature children tend to spend their time:
- reflecting and thinking instead of waiting for stimulation
- discovering and learning instead of being told and shown
-
doing and experiencing instead of watching and owning.
Knowing all of these things, the The Raleigh School preschool teachers have given a lot of thought over the years about how to create natural outdoor play and learning environments for our children at school.
We have consciously moved away from commercial structures and surfaces that look inviting at first but are actually quite sterile and narrowing for children’s play. Instead we have created natural learning environments that are more suited to the natural play of children and that encourage them to engage in the physical world with their bodies, minds, hearts, and friends.
