Winter is well understood as a signal and opportunity for calming down, taking things more slowly, resting up, restoring and regenerating. It encourages a period for what I love to think of as composting. This new post from Early Childhood Outdoors’ co-director and outdoor practitioner extraordinaire, Menna Godfrey, celebrates our milestone of reaching 100 posts …
The introduction of ‘enabling environments’ as a key principle in providing effective early childhood education and care (ECEC) has itself enabled a great leap forward in thinking and practice. As someone who is fascinated by the relationship between organisms (children especially) and their surroundings, I’ve long witnessed that the environment is in fact the first …
Isn’t it good when one thing leads to another? This is certainly one of the intentions behind Early Childhood Outdoors’ mission of bringing outdoor champions into contact with each other. Back in August we shared an edited version of an article written by Orlagh Doyle about how practice at her two nurseries in Wexford, Ireland …
Unhurried communicative spaces in the early learning and care setting Read More »
One of the lovely outcomes for me of participating in the 2019 Children and Nature Network international conference in California was meeting Tania Moloney from Victoria, Australia. Tania has boundless mission, creativity and energy for developing deep experiences for both children and adults in the outdoors – founding and creating Nature in Nurture Australia, Treehouse …
Way back in 1997, Robin Moore and Herb Wong wrote a book documenting the incredible transformation of an American school’s grounds from an exposed asphalt desert into a nature-filled paradise of happiness, wellbeing and highly motivated learning – called Natural Learning: the life history of an environmental schoolyard and subtitled ‘creating environments for rediscovering nature’s way …
I have just finished reading the very interesting paper published (open access online on 28th May 2021) by Nicola Kemp and Jo Josephidou in the journal Early Years, titled Babies and toddlers outdoors: a narrative review of the literature on provision for under twos in ECEC settings. This is from the first phase of their Froebel Trust funded …
A few months ago, in April 2021, Janet Packer and Lindsey Bielby shared some of their vision for Growing Wild Outdoor Nursery at an online meeting hosted by Sheffield branch of Early Education. I was struck by how they framed their approach in practice, towards their core values of wellbeing and sustainability, as a sustainability …
One of the key intentions of Early Childhood Outdoors has been to create a strong and resilient meshwork that brings together the life journeys (both past achievements and future aspirations) of the very many people around the UK and Ireland who hold a strong belief in the importance and value of being outdoors for young …
Outdoor Learning in Carraig Briste & Killegney Early Years Read More »
I’m delighted that this post brings you three things in one: news of the publication of a masterpiece of a book; a lively, live on-line book launch in which we can hear from the two authors; and some reflections from the deep and prolonged experience of writing such a joint Magnus Opus! As described on …
A complete guide to forest school provision and nature pedagogy Read More »
We all know that feeling and showing gratitude is both good for you and motivates positive action, and that regularly noticing and being thankful for small things is just as good – quite likely better – than less frequent larger scale events. Daily experience of gratefulness for what you have can generate wonderful feelings of …
