During early childhood, your child begins to explore the world and inspect every detail. Best of all, they’re starting to ask many questions too. This joy that they are experiencing from just playing outside will shape their entire personality. Children can learn so much from just playing outside.
One benefit of outdoor learning is the shapes of life, whether the circle of a rock or the natural patterns of tree branches, cracks in the sidewalk, or the waves in the water. Whether helping their mental health or improving cognitive development, outdoor learning is an important part of every successful preschool curriculum, including an early learning program at Providence Children’s Academy in South Florida.
What is Outdoor Learning?
Outdoor learning in an early learning program includes any learning experience outdoors in the natural elements. Basically, it’s learning that takes place outside of a classroom. They include nature or other things found outdoors in parks or playscapes. Flower collecting, water play, obstacle courses, and chalk painting are all examples of outdoor learning activities.
Other outdoor learning activities may include school trips to local parks, aquariums, or gardens. Exploring the local area allows them to learn about their neighborhood while enjoying the outdoors.
What Does a Good Preschool Curriculum Include?
A preschool curriculum at an early learning program is a set of learning goals that educators use to help teach young children specific skills. They usually focus on physical, social, and emotional development. They use play-based learning experiences like outdoor learning to introduce important concepts to children like problem-solving, counting, or learning how to share.
Some components of an early learning program curriculum, including a voluntary prekindergarten (VPK) include:
- Literacy
- Math
- Science
- Communication
- Social skills
- Motor skills
- Creativity
How An Early Learning Program Fosters Cognitive Ability In Children
During an early learning program, your child is constantly growing. Outdoor learning activities help them boost their cognitive abilities, whether counting, classification, or reasoning. The playground and the natural world allow them to try new things and to learn other social skills.
When they experience free play outdoors with other children like respecting boundaries, following rules, learning how to share, and communicating with their peers. These are all important components of early preschool cognitive development.
Benefits of Outdoor Play
Outdoor learning activities are important for healthy development, especially during early childhood. Being active offers your child valuable learning experiences that impact their physical development, intelligence, and social skills. Here are 7 benefits of outdoor education.
1. Promoting Exercise
Kids who spend more time outside, at least one hour of active play, are healthier overall. These outdoor spaces are the best environment to encourage kids to climb, run, walk, and jump to grow strong muscles and build their endurance. It also helps them establish a positive relationship with physical activity and maintain an active lifestyle as adults.
2. Improving Problem-Solving
When children play outdoors, they must problem-solve, whether to avoid rocks while walking or stepping over brush or fallen tree branches. When they play on playground equipment, they need to decide how to get to where they want to play safely like how to get to the slide or which foot should go where to move safely across the playscape.
3. Creating A Positive Mindset
Outdoor education activities help your child to grow socially, emotionally, and physically all at the same time. An early learning program promotes physical education outdoors that helps children learn balance and motor skills and work with their peers to explore. This outdoor fun helps improve well-being and mental health exponentially.
4. Developing Coordination & Motor Skills
When children play outside, they must learn how to swing on swings, climb on a jungle gym, or avoid obstacles, all of which improve their gross motor skills. Digging in dirt or sand focuses on dexterity and fine motor skills.
When playing with others on playgrounds or through imaginative games during outdoor learning, little ones learn how to recognize certain social cues and practice communicating with their peers. They also learn how to wait for their turn on a swing or slide, which helps them learn how to cooperate.
6. Hosting Sustainable Learning Experiences
Outdoor play is a fun and natural way for children to understand how important it is to take care of the environment. Positive experiences like running their fingers through dirt encourage them to feel connected to the natural world positively. It’s never too early to help them build a connection between the fun of educational outdoor activities and protecting our environment.
7. Encouraging Imaginative Play
Nature is full of endless props for children to use their creativity to have fun on their own or with others. Imaginative play helps them build creativity too. Outdoor learning offers a blank slate for them to work together building their own world with the things they find while exploring. Talk about fun!
Why Positive Relationships Are Important For Children
Whether from the teachers they’re learning from or their peers, learning how to have healthy relationships is a valuable lesson for children. Every kid is unique and requires different learning needs. Positive relationships are responsive to what a child needs and feels, are consistent, set boundaries, and foster an important sense of belonging where everyone feels heard, valued, and accepted.
How A South Florida Early Learning Program Helps Your Child to Develop & Grow
At Providence Children’s Academy, we provide young children the chance to have the best possible early childhood education. We create a preschool curriculum for our early learning program that encourages children to explore and learn outdoors. Our teachers are dedicated to ensuring every child can grow to their fullest potential.
We believe children learn best with creative play. While every activity is associated with a learning goal, creativity is just as important when your child is growing. To learn more about our VPK or after-care program, call us at 954-570-6914.