A Thriving Learners Story

These Why Sheets, inspired by the work of Alfie Kohn, are research-supported documents designed for educators to share with families about the importance and benefits of nature play. We understand how busy educators are, so these information sheets have been created to help them easily communicate the value of nature play and outdoor learning.

The Why Sheets can be downloaded to support:

• Why Nature Play?
• Why Risky Play?
• Why Sensory Play?
• Why Barefoot and All Weather Play?

Natural and wild spaces offer the best opportunities for children to play freely outdoors. We can’t always provide this experience but we can create spaces that offer rich and diverse experiences that enable children to play how they want to play, that will test their cognitive and physical capabilities, stimulate their senses, provide social interactions or independent play, and will teach them about living things and how to care for them.

The following principles have been developed by Nature Play SA to assist you create an environment that will help all children who use this space to enjoy freedom, fantasy, privacy and peace.

You’ve made the important decision to redevelop your outdoor space into a natural playspace. But how do you go about it and what do you need to consider?

NPSA believe that with the exception of wild, natural environments, carefully planned constructed natural playspaces provide the best opportunities for play that is unstructured and rich in learning opportunities.

This framework will help you establish routines, boundaries and expectations in a fun and simple way.

The nature-based outdoor learning environment offers a unique opportunity for educators to encourage the stretching process in children and help them realise their full potential. When outdoor learning environments are places that allow inspiration and creativity to take root, for curiosity and spontaneity to be realised and importantly, for risk and failures to be viewed as positive learning experiences, children will be the beneficiaries. This learning can help them develop the life skills and awareness they need to be confident, resilient and able-bodied adults who take responsibility for themselves and their actions.

A play space audit invites learners to identify and record different types of play genres available in a space. Simply insert a satellite map image into the space provided or invite learners to map the space themselves.

Learners will need a clipboard and six colour pencils or pens. Exploring a pre-school or kindergarten play space is a great way to help learners learn to identify different play opportunities within a small environment.

Once all the different play opportunities have been identified, learners can engage in discussions about what is missing or what could be added to a space to improve the diversity of play opportunities.

How can you assess connection to nature? Researchers and evaluators have developed numerous tools to measure connections to nature, including surveys, observational strategies, and interview guides.

The Areas of Impact: Observational Story (Ob Story) aims to record how the Department for Education’s Areas of Impact (AOI) may be engaged in nature play settings. The AOI are four domains that support children to learn in holistic and supportive environments:

• Wellbeing
• Effective Learners
• Learner Agency
• Equity and Excellence

The Ob Story has been developed for use by Nature Play SA in their work with site schools and kindergartens. It is also designed for possible future use by teachers and educators, and teaching teams at kindergartens and primary schools. The tool invites education professionals to record an observation of nature play. The Ob Story asks for curriculum links, detailed observation, social play types, considers the child’s perspective, and encourages reflective practice from the observer. There are two versions of the Ob Story that align with the Australian frameworks and curriculums used in South Australian public education: The Australian Curriculum V.9, and the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) V2.0.

Areas of Impact: Observational Story for the Australian Curriculum Version 9

Areas of Impact: Observational Story for Early Years Learning Framework Version 2.0

Social play type:

Noting the type of play may reveal how certain types of social play within nature influence the AOI. Tick play types identified in the play observation.

• Solitary play: a child plays on their own, without interacting with others.
• Onlooker play: a child observes other children playing.
• Parallel play: children play side-by-side, without interacting with each other.
• Associative play: children play side-by-side, with interactions such as sharing resources and speaking to each other.
• Cooperative play: children engage in play together that has an agreed upon, or shared outcome.

Loose parts should be a feature of all children’s play spaces – according to Simon Hutchinson, outdoor education teacher and natural play space designer. A father of three who as Director of Climbing Tree Consultancy has designed over 120 natural play spaces, Simon has a pretty good idea about what children want and need in their play spaces.

When is a play space not just a play space? When it is a teacher? In this expert opinion piece, Paul Johnson challenges us to see our play spaces not just as environments but as educators that guide, shape and stimulate in their own right.

With a whole-school approach in mind and an active student voice, Snowtown Primary School principal Trish Boschetti and upper primary teacher Daina McCormack share their school’s nature play journey and explain how the site has evolved into a hub for outdoor learning. The school collaborated with Bute Primary School for Junk-Yard play sessions. The sessions allowed students, teachers and school community members to collaborate with other nature play-focused schools and inspire an evolving nature play space.