Research: Children and the Outdoors

• http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-our-kids-need-to-get-outside-more_uk_5907a096e4b05c3976818764
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• More than one in nine children in England have not set foot in a park, forest, beach or any other natural environment for at least 12 months, according to a two-year government-funded study.
• 74% of children spent less than an hour in the fresh air, almost a third of children play outdoors for 30 minutes or less a day and one child in five doesn’t play outside at all.
• Children who regularly play outdoors have been shown to be happier, healthier, more confident and less anxious.
• Andy Simpson, from The Wild Network
• The tragic truth is that kids have lost touch with nature and the outdoors in just one generation.
• We all need to become marketing directors for nature.
• Playing outside improves children’s health, happiness and self confidence.
• Being active outdoors produces significant improvements in psychological and emotional wellbeing in children and improving their learning and ability to concentrate.
• A study by the University of Essex found just five minutes “green exercise” can produce rapid improvements in mental wellbeing and self-esteem, with the greatest benefits experienced by the young.
• Play in the outdoors boosts problem-solving skills, focus, determination and gross motor skills.
• Climbing a tree, for example, is about measuring risk, working out a strategy to get up into the branches, learning to trust and push your body - and the glee of succeeding.
• The less children play outdoors, the less they learn to cope with the risks and challenges they will go on to face as adult.
• Nothing can replace what children gain from the freedom and independence of thought they have when trying new things out in the open.
• Playing outdoors improves children’s ability to play imaginatively and to cooperate and compromise with other kids.
• Emotional benefits include reduced aggression and increased happiness.
• Outdoor play allows children’s bodies to produce vitamin D from its best natural source, the sunlight. Vitamin D enhances mood by helping to release serotonin in the brain. Children need healthy levels of serotonin for good mental health and development.
• Relieves stress by reducing levels of cortisol.
• Linked to better sleep patterns.
• Being outdoors in nature gives your children a sense of wonder.
• “Nature deficit disorder” is a phrase coined by author Richard Louv in his book Last Child in the Woods.
• Being outdoors activates and feeds all your child’s senses
• Seeing a newborn lamb up close, turning over stones to search for mini-beasts, finding and touching frog spawn, these are the stimulating moments nature can offer that will always beat a video game for life enhancement and long-lasting memories.
• Just 21% of today’s kids regularly play outside, compared with 71% of their parents.
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• https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/16/childre-nature-outside-play-health
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• 64% of kids today, you played outside less than once a week, or were one of the 28% who haven't been on a country walk in the last year, the 21% who've never been to a farm and the 20% who have never once climbed a tree, you wouldn't know much about nature either.
• More children can identify a Dalek than an owl; a big majority play indoors more often than out.
• The distance our kids stray from home on their own has shrunk by 90% since the 70s; 43% of adults think a child shouldn't play outdoors unsupervised until the age of 14.
• As a result of that, you develop a love for nature, you may care something for its survival, which is probably no bad thing.
• When kids stop going out into the natural world to play, it can affect not just their development as individuals, but society as a whole.
• Richard Louv, author of the bestseller Last Child in the Woods
• The average eight-to-18-year-old American now spends more than 53 hours a week using entertainment media.
• Children's time is much more pressured than it once was. Spare time must be spent constructively: after-school activities, coaching, organised sports – no time for kicking your heels outdoors.
• But the biggest obstacles to today's children being allowed out in this way or even to the nearest park or patch of waste ground stem more from anxiety than squeamishness.
• It's a problem we need to address, because the consequences of failing to allow our children to play independently outside are beginning to make themselves felt.
• childrenandnature.org
• Obesity is perhaps the most visible symptom of the lack of such play, but literally dozens of studies from around the world show regular time outdoors produces significant improvements in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, learning ability, creativity and mental, psychological and emotional wellbeing.
• Free and unstructured play in the outdoors boosts problem-solving skills, focus and self-discipline. Socially, it improves cooperation, flexibility, and self-awareness. Emotional benefits include reduced aggression and increased happiness.
• "Nature is a tool," says Moss, "to get children to experience not just the wider world, but themselves." So climbing a tree, he says, is about "learning how to take responsibility for yourself, and how – crucially – to measure risk for yourself. Falling out of a tree is a very good lesson in risk and reward."
• Ask anyone over 40 to recount their most treasured memories of childhood play, and few will be indoors.
• As things stand, today's children will be unlikely to treasure memories like that: 21% of today's kids regularly play outside, compared with 71% of their parents.
• The picture isn't entirely bleak, though. In the US, nature deficit disorder is big news: Louv is delivering the keynote speech at the American Academy of Pediatrics' annual conference; city parks departments are joining with local health services to prescribe "outdoor time" for problem children. Here, organisations such as the RSPB, National Trust and Natural England are "moving mountains" to get families outdoors.
• Part of the scheme is a website, somersetoutdoorplay.org.uk, detailing more than 30 sites across the county, from hilltops to forests and headlands to beaches, where kids can play unsupervised.
• "Play that's not set up according to an adult agenda – in forests and open spaces, not designated play areas. There are no specific activities, no fixed equipment; there are tree branches and muddy slopes. The spaces themselves are inspiring. Children set their own challenges, assess their own risks, take their own responsibility, have their own adventures, and learn from them. And what they learn can't be taught. You should see them."

https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2016/may/01/nature-nurture-pupils-special-educational-needs-outdoor-education

• Sometimes, the best way to get the most out of the classroom is to leave it and take learning outside. Outdoor learning can make for happier, healthier, well-rounded students – particularly for those with special educational needs (SEN).
• “Reading outdoors is enjoyable, stress-relieving and calming for pupils.”
• Those with social, emotional and mental health SEN – some of whom don’t normally enjoy reading – are more eager to get outside into the reading forest, says Genochio, and for students on the autism spectrum, it provides a quiet, open space.
• The outdoors also provides a new setting to take on challenges, and learn life skills without even realising it.
• Relieves stress and anxiety, develops social skills, motivates learning across the curriculum (and beyond) and allows them to be practical, responsible and productive members of the community,”
• Andrew Colley, lecturer in special education at the Cass School of Education and Communities, University of East London.
• “Giving SEN students that feeling of space, and the sensory stimulation that comes with being outdoors, is absolutely vital.”
• “It takes a long time to see things develop and grow, but having patience is a really good life skill,” she adds. While some children will concentrate on digging earth and planting seeds, others will be calculating the dimensions of the garden or researching which herbs the Romans grew and what vegetables they ate.
• Outdoor activity requires students to adapt to unpredictable weather and the changing seasons, and this can be another positive challenge, says Dr John Crosbie, former director of UK charity the Calvert Trust, which provides outdoor activities for people with disabilities. ”“It shouldn’t just be a case of taking the indoors out – think about what is special about the outside and capitalise on that.”

https://www.whitehutchinson.com/children/articles/outdoor.shtml

• Research on children's preferences shows that if children had the design skills to do so, their creations would be completely different from the areas called playgrounds that most adults design for them. Outdoor spaces designed by children would not only be fully naturalized with plants, trees, flowers, water, dirt, sand, mud, animals and insects, but also would be rich with a wide variety of play opportunities of every imaginable type. If children could design their outdoor play spaces, they would be rich developmentally appropriate learning environments where children would want to stay all day.
• Limiting outdoor playgrounds to gross motor activities and manufactured equipment falls way short of the potential of outdoor areas to be rich play and learning environments for children. This playground design paradigm paralysis also denies children their birthright to experience the entire natural outdoors which includes vegetation, animals, insects water and sand, not just the sun and air that manufactured playgrounds offer.
• The world once offered thousands of delights of free play to children. Children used to have access to the world at large, whether it was the sidewalks, streets, alleys, vacant lots and parks of the inner city or the fields, forests, streams and yards of suburbia and the rural countryside. Children could play, explore and interact with the natural world with little or no restriction or supervision.
• The lives of children today are much more structured and supervised, with few opportunities for free play.
• Their physical boundaries have shrunk.
• Parents are afraid for their children's safety when they leave the house alone; many children are no longer free to roam their neighborhoods or even their own yards unless accompanied by adults.
• Some working families can't supervise their children after school, giving rise to latchkey children who stay indoors or attend supervised after-school activities.
• Children's lives have become structured and scheduled by adults, who hold the mistaken belief that this sport or that lesson will make their children more successful as adults.
• Children have little time for free play any more.
• When children do have free time, it's often spent inside in front of the television or computers.
• For some children, that's because their neighborhood, apartment complex or house has no outdoor play spaces.
• Children's opportunities to interact in a naturalized outdoor setting is greatly diminished today.
• Early experiences with the natural world have been positively linked with the development of imagination and the sense of wonder.
• Wonder is important as it a motivator for lifelong learning.
• There is also strong evidence that young children respond more positively to experiences in the outdoors than adults as they have not yet adapted to unnatural, man-made, indoor environments.
• The natural world is essential to the emotional health of children.
• Just as children need positive adult contact and a sense of connection to the wider human community, they also need positive contact with nature and the chance for solitude and the sense of wonder that nature offers.
• When children play in nature they are more likely to have positive feelings about each other and their surroundings.
• Children experience the natural environment differently than adults.
• Adults typically see nature as background for what they are doing.
• Children experience nature, not as background for events, but rather as a stimulator and experiential component of their activities.
• Children's idea of beauty is wild rather than ordered.
• Things children like in their outdoor environments include:
• water
• vegetation, including trees, bushes, flowers and long grasses,
• animals, creatures in ponds, and other living things
• sand, best if it can be mixed with water
• natural color, diversity and change
• places and features to sit in, on, under, lean against, and provide shelter and shade
• different levels and nooks and crannies, places that offer privacy and views
• structures, equipment and materials that can be changed, actually or in their imaginations, including plentiful loose parts.
• Children's discovery play gardens are places where children can reclaim the magic that is their birthright - the ability to learn in a natural environment through exploration, discovery and the power of their own imaginations.

https://www.virtuallabschool.org/school-age/learning-environments/lesson-3

• Outside, children and youth can release energy, use loud voices, play vigorously, and engage in messy projects.
• Better physical health
• Numerous opportunities to strengthen motor skills
• Stress relief
• Greater visual-motor integration (or the ability to control hand or body movement guided by vision)
• Greater creativity
• Stronger verbal and social skills
• Production of Vitamin D (an essential vitamin for bone health) through exposure to sunlight
• Increased attention and cognitive abilities (Wells, 2000)