Why is Outdoor Play Important for Children’s Development?
- Learning Resources Posted On Jan 18, 2022 | Learn
Even during the winter months, children love playing outside. In this blog post, Learning Resources looks at a few ways outdoor play is important for childhood development. You’ll find interesting insights that will inspire you to head outdoors more often, even on an overcast or cold day. These aren’t the only reasons, and you’ll find lots more info from guest bloggers in the related content section below, as well as a free outdoor activities printable pack when you browse our blog.
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Why is outdoor play important for children’s development?
There are several fundamental ways outdoor play helps your child’s development. Outdoor play helps your child develop essential physical skills and abilities such as gross motor skills, and the vestibular sense. Outdoor play also helps with social-emotional learning and building essential life skills such as problem-solving, resilience, and social skills.
But mostly, outdoor play is fun, and nearly all children enjoy playing outdoors most of the year. Playing outside gives children the freedom to run, jump, climb, explore, and make lots of noise! Explore why is outdoor play important for children’s development.
How does outdoor play help physical development?
Active outdoor play helps develop gross motor skills. These are the skills involved in whole body movement such as walking, running, and jumping. Active outdoor play boosts a child’s overall fitness, muscle tone, and helps develop the vestibular sense.
The vestibular sense is what allows us to keep tabs on the position of our heads. It gives us a sense of balance and equilibrium, and the position of our bodies in relation to the world around us. The vestibular sense helps to develop and maintain normal muscle tone and allows your child to do everyday activities such as copying down information from a board in the classroom. This sense is also what helps children when coordinating movements on both sides of the body for a wide range of tasks such as riding a bike or cutting with scissors.
Bouncing on a trampoline, climbing on playground equipment, and stepping on stones with big jumps are all fun ways outdoor play helps with gross motor skills and developing the vestibular sense.
How does outdoor play help emotional development?
There are so many ways outdoor play helps with social-emotional learning (SEL). Here are two:
- The outdoors helps children with personal and emotional development by offering environments where kids can have fun exploring and challenging themselves through physical activities. The excitement of mastering a new challenge or overcoming an obstacle helps build confidence and resilience.
- Giving children the freedom to find a fun activity in which they become engaged and engrossed helps build confidence and give children a sense of autonomy and agency. Whether it’s in a garden, at your local park, or the wild, the outdoors offers children endless choices to find creative ways to play and learn and grow in confidence.
How does outdoor play help intellectual development?
The outdoors is an infinite learning space for children. Regular outdoor play encourages children to see the world as their classroom with new things to explore and learn all around them. It’s also ideal for introducing new ways to learn about topics they’ve already come across. Outdoor play is ideal for STEM learning. A climbing frame becomes a physical science lesson about gravity and motion and making a bug hotel from sticks becomes a lesson in basic engineering.
An area that neuroscientists are increasingly exploring is the benefits of feeling a sense of awe. While this feeling is difficult to define, we all know it when we feel it! Spending time playing outdoors offers children so many ways to experience awe, and insights suggest that awe can boost critical thinking and encourage scientific reasoning and learning in children.
It is also a multi-sensory experience. There’s so much to touch, hear, see, smell – and yes, even taste – outdoors. There’s something new every season. Whether it’s the sights and smells of autumn leaves, the sounds of winter, the new green growth spring brings, and the feel of summer sunshine on the skin. Engaging their senses provides children with rich learning and play experiences that help them develop a deeper understanding of their world.
How does outdoor play help social development?
Social development is an essential part of social-emotional learning (SEL). The outdoors offers an ideal environment for children to develop and practise the SEL skills they need for healthy inter-personal relationships while having lots of active fun.
When children play with others outside, they naturally practise social-emotional skills such as taking turns, sharing, and negotiating through activities such as making up their own games, and organising in groups and activities.
How does outdoor play support language development?
There’s a whole world of words waiting to be discovered outdoors! There’s so much to do, see, and talk about when introducing early language skills to young children. They’ll be curious about their surroundings and it’s a great opportunity to help connect what they’re learning indoors to concepts they experience outdoors.
As children grow and learn, the outdoors offers ways to deepen their vocabulary and language skills when introduced to new activities. A great way to encourage this is to ask them about what they saw and did while playing. The act of telling you about their play adventures will boost language skills and young imaginations!
Find more fun toys and games to encourage your child’s natural love of outdoor play. Browse our toys for Outdoor Play today.
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