So how can we make the most of the great outdoors to enrich a child's learning?

Top Tips for creating an exciting outdoor learning environment.

    * Provide a digging area for both boys and girls. Along with a small area of bare soil to dig, provide spades, forks, wellies and waterproofs so that digging can occur at any time in any weather. To add interest you may hide a few old coins under the soil or a letter in a bottle, a shark's tooth or some 'treasure' to encourage your child to use their imagination and create exciting scenarios.

    * A wild area will encourage your child to interact with the fascinating world of insects. A couple of logs or rocks to tip up and look under, grasses as tall as themselves, colourful plants and dangling branches lend themselves to exploration and investigation. Add a magnifying glass, a microscope and binoculars. Dangle sparkly baubles from branches. Give your child a camera to be a wildlife photographer. Hide model insects in the grass and go for a bug hunt. How good is an insect's camouflage? How many colours can they see? Your child can identify insects using a simple visual guide then use a clipboard and pencil to tally up how many of each they find.

    * Go out in the rain with an umbrella and wellies. Experience the smells, colours and sounds of the rain falling on different surfaces. Encourage your child to ask questions; how do we get rain? Why are raindrops round? What if it rained for a week? Or not at all? Then help your child find the answer by talking, making connections between things such as dark clouds and rain and researching on the internet.

    * Make dens by providing sheets, long sticks or branches, thin rope and pegs. Making dens is not only great fun, it also encourages mathematical thinking. Your child will have to measure by looking, estimate how much string they will need or pegs, or how long the den will stay up. Your child will become aware of shape, size, area - how many people will fit inside the den? - weight - larger sticks are heavier to carry than smaller ones, comparison, and more. The den may then become a camp with a bowl of water for fishing using fishing rods made of twigs and more string. What can they fish for? There may be singing around a camp fire and the toasting of marshmallows in the evening.

    * Chalking with chunky chalks will develop your child's motor skills. Chalk secret maps, arrows to follow, pirate messages, labels and signs to underground tunnels (a small hole in the ground). Draw the monster/dinosaur/fairy living in the pond/under the shed next door. Use your imaginations. Children will write for a purpose, so make the purpose exciting.

    * Follow your child's imagination and try to enhance not impose. Take your child's idea and help them to fulfill its grandest vision. A large cardboard box has enormous versatility and can become anything; a ship, a castle, a wild animal or a TV screen. In fact, is there anything a cardboard box can't become?

If you do not have access to your own garden then take a cardboard box, a sheet, wellies, a spade and magnifying glass to the nearest park or beach. Luckily many props are surprisingly portable. Even a box can be flat packed and carried.

Time spent outdoors can be the most exciting and satisfying of a child's experience. Contact with the natural world is also beneficial for releasing stress, improving behaviour and social skills and developing sensory learning. Not to mention for the opportunity to play with their favourite playmate - you!

Carolyn Field author of 'I Am Me' a confidence building workbook for children.
Carolyn Field has been a teacher for over twenty years. She is also a qualified life coach and runs workshops for both children and adults covering topics such as goal setting, keeping motivated, dealing with setbacks and stepping comfortably out of comfort zones. Talking to children about their worries in an atmosphere of mutual trust and support is an important component in building confidence and self esteem. Carolyn Field's child friendly workbook for children is simple to use and designed to begin a dialogue with a child. and to work through a variety of confidence building activities, set achievable goals, engender a feeling of self reliance and raise self esteem.
http://www.helpyourchildiamme.co.uk

By Carolyn Field