Supporting Connection to Place at Christie Downs Primary School

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?

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

National parks, botanic gardens and other natural spaces are ideal places for our curiosity and imagination to run wild. See how many things you can notice in nature – you never know what you may find!

Green Adelaide offer a range of resources for teachers, information on gardens, samphires, native grass and more.

• Beachcombing ID Chart
• Common Urban Birds ID chart
• Aquatic Macroinvertebrate ID Chart

• All Green Adelaide Teacher Resources

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.

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.

Conducted in partnership with Nature Play SA, the Australian first study from the University of South Australia found that while all teachers believe that nature-based play and learning can deliver huge benefits for children, seven out of 10 teachers felt that their knowledge and confidence was limiting their ability to fully embrace these opportunities at school.

Surveying teachers in 50 South Australian public schools, Dr Nicole Miller found that the benefits of nature-based play and learning for children included:

• better mental health (98%)
• improved cognitive development (96%)
• learning about risk-taking (96%)
• spending time outdoors/in nature (96%).

Barriers to adopting nature-based play and learning for teachers included:

• limited knowledge and confidence about how to incorporate into learning or how to operate the class outside (68%)
• a crowded curriculum restricted their ability to adopt new learning (64%)
• a lack of understanding/support from others in the school (38%).

Nature Play SA has created an infographic and reflection tool to help educators explore the benefits and challenges they face when engaging in outdoor learning and nature play.

Good play spaces that allow children to be autonomous, take risks, be in charge, construct and deconstruct, collaborate, wonder and reflect not only help build learning power but offer the opportunity for the child to Powerful playgrounds are provocative places that demand rigour but be respected as competent and capable.