Nature Play; The Benefits, And How to Encourage Our Children To Spend More Time Outside.
Much research has gone into the benefits of connecting children to nature.
The research shows that a child’s emotional, physical, academic and social health is positively impacted when they are regularly engaged in activity and play in nature.
The Climbing Trees report cited many benefits, including Improved motor coordination and increased ability to concentrate, opportunities for decision making that stimulate problem solving and creative thinking, reduction in attention deficit symptoms, minimising anxiety, aggression and sleep problems, learning vital social skills such as turn-taking, sharing, negotiation and leadership.
Despite the known benefits of outdoor play/time, evidence suggests that outdoor play/time has been decreasing over the years and children are becoming far less engaged with nature.
Why the change?
There are a number of reasons why this decline has been occurring. With 24/7 news reporting we are now living in a more fearful society, so parents are worrying more about safety. There are concerns around traffic, crime, strangers, injury, and nature itself, for example, skin cancer due to sun exposure, bug bites, and harmful animals. All of these fears impact the time children spend outside.
Children are also being enrolled in more structured activities, which can be great for many reasons, however, too many of these are not leaving time for free play in nature.
‘Screen time’ is also replacing ‘green time’.
Gaming, watching TV and spending time on social media can be exciting for children and can trigger the release of dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter that can encourage the association of screens with pleasure. Naturally children seek the thing that gives them pleasure, so switching on the screen is an instant pleasure fix. Busy parents who are concerned about the safety of their child can end up allowing more time on devices than is recommended, as this it is a ‘safer’ option knowing that your child is occupied in the house while you are getting jobs done.
Is all outdoor play the same?
All play outside is beneficial and is absolutely better than no outdoor play. However, it’s important to mention that research has shown that nature play has further benefits. Nature play is when children are provided with the opportunity to engage in unstructured play activities in outdoor settings where natural elements feature, such as logs, rocks, trees, sand and water, as opposed to conventional manufactured play equipment. Children can create their own play using natural features. Many playgrounds offer structured environments that circumscribe play opportunities and leave little space for developing kids to exercise their imaginations. This is where nature play exceeds the more general benefits of playing outdoors.
Unscripted play allows a space that helps to promote the social, emotional, creative and physical development of children.
It builds their critical thinking and conceptualization skills, and studies have shown that children spend twice as long playing in nature as they do on traditional manufactured playgrounds.
So, how do we encourage our children to spend more time outdoors?
There are many ways in which we can support our child’s connection with nature and have a complete outdoor experience. We can do this by encouraging both ‘active’ and ‘passive’ exposure to nature. ‘Passive’ exposure to nature are activities, such as walking to school (even parking further away from the school if you don’t live close enough) or having a picnic. ‘Active’ exposure to nature are activities, such as gardening, in which they can plant and learn about the life cycle and care taking, looking for bugs, building forts and getting muddy!
We need to take a look at what natural spaces we have around us.
Can we get to a national park with hiking and biking trails? Do we have any green spaces we can walk to, whether it’s a duck pond or an oval? Any natural playgrounds close by? A back garden?
When we’ve taken note of what nature spaces are available, we can be more conscious of how to promote more time in these places. Here are some more ideas to assist in getting our kids outside;
Get them to help with outdoor chores such as weeding, watering the plants or sweeping.
Start a vegetable patch.
Nature scavenger hunt.
Encourage play dates outside instead of at home.
Outdoor games.
Have Breakfast/lunch/dinner outside
Make sand pies at the beach or mud pies in the garden!
Make a regular activity out of bike rides, walking trails
Join a ‘bush kinder’ or nature play programme. I know this is a planned activity, but they are designed to allow our children the freedom to explore the natural environment with a child-led approach.
Go camping!
Get the gumboots on and go puddle jumping!
Children are naturally curious about our world.
Let’s foster this and get them outside more often. Whether we have to start off with something a little more structured, like the scavenger hunt for example, in order to ease them in to their free play, we can be their guide. The benefits of time in nature are vast and we can lead the way. We can get our family out of the house (and away from screens), which will serve not just our kids, but us too!
