The Explorers (Becca & Olivia)

The Explorers:

What our activity was:
Our activity was to look at the outdoors as a whole, looking specifically at different areas of the outdoors and how these areas can be adapted to different environments. For example bringing the outdoors inside. We were able to therefore look at the flexibility of settings and how these settings are able to adapt their indoor/ outdoor environment appropriately for the individual child.

How we did the activity:

For this activity we were able to create a large activity book to promote different areas of the outdoors and to show the adaptions of the activities within a setting.

We presented this activity book to our peers, as well as presenting two practical activities for everyone to try. This was a way of us promoting bringing the outdoors indoor, through both practical play.

The activity book consisted of 10 activities, done with children in a setting, showing different variations of the outdoors and how the outdoors is an important contributor to children’s learning.

From this activity book we chose two activities to focus on and present practically. These included a bubble snake and musical instruments, which we were able to make and bring in for everyone to try.

The Activity Book:

The activity book was created to show areas of the outdoors being brought inside through different range of resources. For example natural resources such as leaves were used for leaf printing, leaf rubbing, a treasure hunt and were a key element of the musical instruments.

The activity book had instructions of how to do the activity, as well as pictures of the activity being made and the final result. Each activity made was specific t different areas of development and was created from the natural resources of the outdoors, therefore suitable for both the indoor and outdoor environment.

For example the ‘bubble snake’ activity was a good activity to help children with speech and language barriers, as the bubble snake consisted of the children blowing into the top of the bubble snake, therefore getting children to use muscles in their mouth which they may not have done before, therefore promoting children to use new muscles and hopefully helping with the development of their speech and language.

Why did we choose to do outdoor play:

We chose to do outdoor play as a whole so that we could focus on the different areas of the outdoors and promote a whole range of development areas for children, helping them to specifically develop at their own rate accordingly, using the outdoors as a different approach of learning for children.

The outdoors is an ever-changing environment, which is freely structured and therefore supports flexible learning. Children learn many things through the outdoors whether it is through adult led or child led activities and this is why we decided to focus on this area.

 By Becca and Olivia