Nature’s Abundant Playground

I am an indoors person.  I love being at home and, except for our summer season on the road with Nok On Wood, my work is mostly indoors too.  This gives me a greater challenge in ensuring that my son gets enough opportunity to play freely outdoors.

Fortunately his school grounds are extensive and are mostly woodland, and as my work at the school often goes beyond the end of his school day this wonderful playground provides him with lots of opportunities to explore, create dens, climb trees and generally connect with nature.  However, even without this, there are ways of helping children enjoy time outdoors and there is no doubt that it is beneficial to them in many ways.

Children’s playgrounds can be fun for a while but they have become so sanitized that they do not give children much opportunity to engage with nature in a playful way.  In order to grow up in a healthy balanced way children need more opportunities to play in wild places, discover their personal boundaries and take a few risks.  (I have written more on this topic in The Cautious Parent post).  Even the smallest woodland or a recreational park can provide opportunities to explore and discover.

Outdoor play doesn’t have to cost anything either, it doesn’t require expensive toys or tools and offers a wealth of life experiences that the whole family can enjoy.  The wonderful seasonal changes add to the variety of ways we can engage with nature and even when it is raining and cold it is beneficial to get outside and have some fun.  Here are some seasonal activities to help you make the most of whatever park or woodland you have in your area, and further down some ideas for turning your garden into a place your children can enjoy all year round.

Gaining an Appreciation of Nature

Just getting out and allowing your children to run, play and roam in nature will provide them with a lot more than initially meets the eye.  Children have a natural curiosity about the world around them and they will soon be discovering things that as adults we are quick to overlook or take for granted.  Give them plenty of time to climb trees, rummage in the undergrowth and balance along fallen logs.  They will lead the way into a wonderland you could never have envisioned.  Our weekly school walk days include visits to the Post Box (sawn off tree trunk with a hollow in the top), the Rocket (a log that is lying at a 45° angle) and the Beach (a sandy patch alongside the river) to name but a few.

For older children there are ways of appreciating nature in a more structured way that can involve you learning and exploring alongside them.  Gather a note pad and pencil, and a box for collecting nature’s treasures.  Even if you consider yourself completely without any artistic talent, just by taking the time to really study a small twig, flower or leaf you will find you can create a pretty good likeness on paper.  If like me your knowledge for identifying trees and plants is limited you can enjoy discovering more about them with your children.

Take your drawings and collections home with you where you can look them up and discover their names and more about their origins.  My suggestion is if you are using a book, leave it at home so that you really take the time to notice the characteristics of each plant you are studying and just enjoy being in nature while you are out there.  Make the research a separate activity that can be undertaken at home.  Leaves and flowers can be preserved by pressing and your children can then create a collage for the home or make personalized cards and gifts for friends and family.

Return to the same places at different times of the year to see how everything has changed. Within a short time of doing this you will begin to have a real understanding for how different leaves sprout, flowers form and how plants grow, then wither and die at the end of their season.  This will help your children gain an understanding for birth, growth, death and rebirth in a very experiential way which will provide them with a greater sense of personal well being as they go through the changes that growing up entails.

Create a corner of your home that is designated as a nature table.  Here you can add seasonal decorations from nature and if you are feeling creative you could make a few felt animals and gnomes to add to the display.  When it comes time to change the nature table take your collections back to the place you collected them and use the opportunity to thank nature for her abundance.  This helps your children to gain a sense of appreciation and reverence for their environment.

Enjoying the Seasons

Bright spring sunshine and long hazy summer days are likely to bring most people outdoors.  They lend themselves to walks in the country, holidays by the beach, and just sharing the sunshine with friends in each others gardens.  This provides children with plenty of opportunity to be active outdoors whether it is engaging in the activities of adults through gardening or simply playing amongst themselves.  But this isn’t the only time of year to enjoy being out and about and engaging with the seasons in different weather conditions gives children a greater understanding of, and affinity with the world around them.

Wet days provide lots of scope for playing with water.  Simple pleasures such as catching raindrops in your mouth, running and splashing in puddles and playing Pooh Sticks over a stream or river can add delight to any rainy day.  Take this opportunity to make little boats from sticks and shells and sail them in puddles and streams.  Create channels for rain water to run down and see how quickly you can create pools and build dams.  Walking through woodland on a rainy day can be a magical experience as the trees are transformed with glittering raindrops and the sound of dripping leaves fills the air.  If you are wrapped up well there is no reason to avoid being outdoors on a rainy day.

Windy weather offers the chance to fly kites and make wind socks.  In the autumn the whirlwind of tumbling leaves provide a great excuse to run and spin and generally let off steam.  Children are often affected by windy whether and you are likely to find them more restless and in need to get up and move about when it is windy outside.  Wrapping up warmly and getting outdoors means they can vigorously release some of that energy and engaging them in an activity when they return home will help to settle them again.

Outdoor activities don’t have to be restricted to daylight hours either.  Night-time is portrayed as being quite scary for children and this is particularly re-enforced with Halloween and stories of ghosts and ghouls.  But when the autumn nights draw in quite early they provide the perfect opportunity to help children feel at peace with the dark.  At school we celebrate Martinmas with a lantern walk through the woods.  Little lights are placed in recesses along the path, the children carry lanterns that they have made themselves and we all sing lantern songs together.  It is a delightful and magical experience and rather than being scary the children really engage with this magic.

Snow of course adds obvious delights that transform our landscape adding a hush to the busy-ness of life.   There is no reason why deep snow should only be considered an inconvenience.  If you are snowed up and can’t get out you have the perfect opportunity of enjoying the delights of the season with your children.  As well as building snowmen and sledging, you could take on the greater challenge of building an igloo.  Even if it is only big enough for a small rodent and collapses within hours the experience of having a go is great fun.

In The Garden

Even if you have a small garden there is still plenty of scope for your children to engage with nature.  Putting out food for the birds and growing flowers and vegetables are the obvious ones that can even be enjoyed when you have no garden at all.  If you do have the luxury of a garden, make it a place where your children can make the most of nature.  Leaving a small patch of the garden to grow wild will help invite wildlife into your domestic patch and if you are lucky you may even attract a hedgehog.  Rotting logs are particularly attractive to them as a place to hide and shelter and if nothing else they will encourage insects that help to add a healthy balance to your garden.

Bird boxes will encourage nesting birds.  Sunflowers are easy and immediate flowers for children to grow and enjoy throughout the summer and when the flowers have died away the seeds make great bird food.  As well as a box, consider also adding a feeder or bird bath.  These are great ways for watching birds more closely particularly if they are placed where you can watch from a window.  We have really enjoyed watching the birds feed in our garden while we are having breakfast indoors each day.

Choosing plants that attract wildlife will give your children plenty of opportunity to study them.  Lavender is particularly attractive to bees and it is lovely to harvest and bring into the home.  Bunched together with rosemary it makes a fragrant addition to the nature table.  Just a few lavender seeds poured over with hot water makes a deliciously soothing warm drink, popular with the children in our kindergarten.  A lavender bag placed under the hot water tap when filling the bath adds a subtle fragrance to bath time.  We had a lovely old buddleia tree in the garden of our last house which was perfect for attracting butterflies and bees.

A pond makes a wonderful garden feature for children to enjoy.  I have fond memories of discovering tadpoles as a child and the children at school take great pleasure in the frogs that hatch out in the school pond.  Even in a small garden a pond can be created with an old washing up bowl and a few potted water plants.

Children love to help with the gardening and will soon become very helpful and active assistants when it comes to weeding and hoeing.  My son was just 6 when he helped with the levelling, raking and seeding of our back lawn and he now takes pride in caring for it.

The opportunities for children to enjoy being in nature are really quite endless and there are lots of books and online resources that will help get you started.  The key is to get them outside just having fun.