Now the birds fill the woods with their springtime songs,
While winter commands a cold obedience over nature’s optimism,
And wanders and wails among the silent trees
That stand strong and tall – meditating upon our playful ways.
The children came again for awhile to play and roam among sticks and stones.
They remembered your presence,
Played with the dogs, walked along logs and fell in the bog.
They watched the mist creeping into the valley as they left
Carrying woodland contentment and wearing moments of peace,
Holding something special.
With love and thanks to you from all of us, those before us, and those yet to come.

The natural environment appears to provide freedom which actively encourages children to develop their fullest functional potential within a living curriculum of effective educational resources that organically nurture the children’s enthusiastic social disposition and curiosity about life. (Montessori,1967:50; Bradburn,1976:55.)

Pioneering educators that advocate the young child’s affinity with the naturalecology, considered the natural environment a stimulating and nurturing resource for all aspects of the young child’s physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual development.

‘A child needs to live naturally and not simply have knowledge of nature.’(Montessori,1967:67,172)(Montessori,1988:200)

In the Norwegian nurseries the ‘children experience wooded areas with rivers and streams every day’(Curruthers cited in Moyles,2007:176)Lasenby describes weather as ‘one of the most valuable resources’ which provides experiential experience that increases children’s ‘knowledge and understanding of the world in which they live.’ (Cited in Ouvry,2003:24)In Finland the outdoor Forest School approach presents the wild natural environment and the changing seasons as the curriculum and the teacher for children up to the age of six; Finland is regularly placed in top positions in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s ‘prestigious world

rankings for educational performance and literacy’. (Honore, 2004:25)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visual Perceptual Skills

Visual perceptual skills are strongly motivated within the world of nature especially in relation to animals where detailed visual discriminationincludes the skills of visual tracking and visual closure.

Freedom to Move
Outdoor spaces offer more physical space which supports greater freedoms of physical activity and therefore accidents may be less frequent and less serious than those encountered in the more crowded and intense indoor environments……

 

 

 

 

 

 

The children learn to take responsibility for their own awareness of what they can do safely. The natural outdoor environment addresses the output and impute of sensory information from all the major sensory modalities and ‘leads to the recognition that the entire brain is involved in movement.’ (Callaway,2005:10)

Issues related to children’s safety are integral to their ability to judge what level of activity can be accommodated safely on a moment by moment basis. The skills associated with safety are also interconnected with other areas of development such as those listed below:-

• Secure balance is inseparable from the development of postural control, which in turn is supported by information from: visual, proprioception, and motor systems.’
• Physical movement and the development of visual eye movements and associated visual perceptual competence are interdependent.

The academic foundations of numeracy, reading and writing are initially dependent upon the ability to know one’s ‘position in space’ and associated directional awareness

 

 

 

Physical Movement, Balance and Auditory perceptual skills
A growing body of evidence indicates that direct exposure to nature is essential for physical and emotional health. Early creativity and experimentation during free play can provide important foundations for future ‘formal operations’ and skills of creative performance.

The skills of balance, mobility and co-ordination associated with physical movement have been shown to improve children’s ability to negotiate challenges and explore related aspects of ability and safety.Natural environments can offer a wide choice of activity to suit different levels of confidence, adventure and physical ability.(Callaway,2005:10)
‘Education cannot be effective unless it helps the child to open himself to life………it is essential that a child’s spontaneous movements should not be checked or that he be compelled to act according to the will of another.’ (Montessori,1967:50)
Vestibular stimulation also influences specific physiological and biochemical changes in the body associated with emotional experiences.
‘Immature vestibular functioning is frequently found amongst children who have specific learning difficulties and adults who suffer from anxiety and Agoraphobia and panic disorders.’ (Goddard,2004:17)

‘Nature deficit disorder …… diminished used of the senses, attentiondifficulties and higher rates of physical and emotional illness.’ New studies suggest that the exposure to nature may reduce the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and that it can improve all children’s cognitive abilities and resistance to negative stresses and depression.’ (Louv,2006:34)

In contrast to the wealth of experiential sensory experiences presented in natural environments some aspects of indoor learning environments are thought to disrupt the child’s sensory development e.g. manmade structures, buildings and machinery are thought to disturb the young child’s developing auditory perception and integration of sounds.
‘Nature finds expression through music- From the whispering of the wind in the leaves, to the thundering of a stormy sea on the shore. Just as all living things share the characteristic of motion, all of life is sound….’(Goddard, 2004:69,73,79,91)
The work of Rauscher & Shaw (1996) showed a clear ‘link between music, and Spatial intelligence – the accurate perceptual ability and mental imagery in pre-school children. (Cited in Goddard,2004:79)
Within any building sounds are distorted by reverberation and absorption as illustrated in these diagrams.

Some buildings also have special insulation to keep out external sounds. Within the indoor classroom background noise and auditory language is likely to dominate the acoustic geography and may deter the children from retaining and developing focused  listening skills. These factors also add complex auditory deviations and variables of intensity to the young child’s task of developing accurate auditory perceptual skills and may contribute to why children prefer to play outside where the acoustics are more stable.

Also one could consider how strong smells presented in manmade materials may disrupt the young child’s natural range of ability to discern different subtleties of smell. Even when the

natural sensory stimulus is very strong, nature appears to  present a sense of balance and harmony that calms situations of potential frustration, fear or overwhelming stimulus with complementary contrast, a sense of predictability and natural elements of geographic control: gravity, density, force .

 

 

‘Children if left to explore can discover their passions – the activities, the skills that bring forth the totality of their Life Energy’. They can come to ‘understand the nature of a joyful life’ where, success and failure are intrinsic within the creativity of observation and doing; free from man-made rewards and punishment, structural boundaries and associated dangers, social rules and expectations. (Harrison,2002:13) In nature children are finding out about the world for themselves, and about themselves as a part of the living world.

Research has suggested that adults are more willing to let children:-

• direct their own play activities,
• organise and change the physical aspects of the environment,
• integrate themselves socially into their own co-operative games,
• settle their own disputes and issues of conflict,

and children are more able to:-

• request help from adults and peers,
• play cooperatively together in mixed age groups,
• play cooperatively with children from different backgrounds and/or learning disabilities.

 

 

Children can make choices of what, when and how to share with adults and vice versa.

Adults can relax into a more compassionate and attentive role as listener and share in child initiated conversations and activities.

 

 

 

Early creativity and experimentation can provide foundations for future ‘formal operations’ and skills of creative performance

 

 

 

 

Children enjoy the challenges of working outside with the adults especially when it involves caringfor animals, use of tools and physical challenges.

 

 

 

Children enjoy time to do their own thing in their own way, un-witnessedfree from distractions and other’s influences.

‘Respectful close observation and passive participation can be effective ways of hearing young children’s powerful communications and taking account of their perspectives…’ (Peter Elfer (2005) Cited in Moyles, 2007:189.) From this perspective adults can successfully scaffold learning with careful adult organisation, specialist supervision and safety equipment.

Adults can structure special activities to suit individual children’s interests and encourage working together and sharing social events as a community

During their early years children may gain an affinity, detailed perceptual skills, and a respectful sense of curiosity and enquiry that can have a positive influence upon their growing intellectual abilities. Steinerdescribes the young child’s affinity to the nature world as ‘a deep, inner feeling that the plant world belongs to the Earth’ and an inner awareness of ‘the true relationship between the human and the animal world…’(Steiner,1997:68) In nature we see skills and abilities that are equal to and beyond normal human abilities.

1. Earth’s abundant water.
2. The correct amount of heat and light from the sun.
3. Our atmosphere with its right mix of gases – life supporting air.
4. Fertileland.’(Watchtower,Feb 15^th 2007:7)

Natural environments give children appropriate levels of support for decentering, accommodating mentally/physically/emotionally another’s perspective or point of view.

The integration of both hemispheres, and thoughts with feelings, is especially well supported by natural environments which offer a wealth of sensory experience, holistic integration of actions,self-chosen and initiated enquiry and experiential experience, open ended play potential and an extensive range of choices. (Moyles,2007:246)

 

Similarly the child’s natural desire to play and learn, experiment and explore, seek and find, is most severely restricted, thwarted by manmade environments. Further more evidence seems to suggest that it is man’s own physical structures, and machines that create the most serious issues of safety as shown in the two child related examples below:-

Over 2/3s of children’s accidents (deaths and non-fatal incidents) involved hood/neck drawstrings on upper outerwear.There are however other safer alternative as shown.(Wellhousen,2002:206-207)

 

‘Presently the Early Years Foundation Stage (DfES 2006) is promoting and focusing on teachers’ awareness of engaging boys. More access and opportunity to go outside and connect with larger spaces that can accommodate boys’ interests’ and ‘provide a more boy-friendly environment.’(Moyles, Ed. 2007:182)

The natural world bountifully nurtures all aspects of movement and sensory experience within an essentially social and spiritual constitution that gives a depth and wealth of support to early development within the sensitive periods. (Montessori,1988:201; Montessori,1967:172; Meadows,2006:336)

The pictures below illustrate an example of the different sensory experience and interaction presented to a child’s feet within the contrasting indoor and outdoor play experiences.

The natural environment provides a treasure basket of natural materials for heuristic play (Goldschmied, 2004),as well as a wealth of aesthetic experiences. Motivation for movement is related to interest, needs and abilities provided by interactive experiences with natural phenomena which encourage good foundations for physical development, health and fitness.Human biology illustrates that there is a direct relationship between exercise, physical growth, breathing rate, lung capacity, neurological brain development, emotional stability and intellectual development.(Vander et al. 2001)Doman’s research illustrated that functional activity determines structural development in the brain as well as in the body. (Doman,1960:189&262)Steiner presents that Sensory-motor activity (movement) ‘also equates with the consequential development of language and thinking.’ (Steiner, 1988:32)

Research also suggests that during the early years children’s thinking abilities are related to their emotional involvement rather than organised thinking processes. This supports theories presenting that sharing with others transforms learning into something of greater value than just learning for oneself.

In Honour of the Trees

Standing tall in your strength against time.

In silent unseeing observation,

Of generations growing from children into parenting.

While the wind brings an ever moving creativity to your serenity,

Your roots remain secure in the abundance of a future potency,

You greet the ways of our days

But we rarely appreciate the longevity of your life giving presence;

Those unconditional life giving fortunes given to a world of little gratitude and faint observations.