Tuesday, 26 March 2024
    25
    Feb
    Education

    Nature play improves fitness

    A simple stick, says Doug Fargher, is a wonderful tool for students, The Age reports.

    “When they are playing with a stick, it can be whatever their imagination requires: something for making marks, for counting, or measuring. The best materials for children are open-ended.”

    Mr Fargher has long experience in encouraging children to wield sticks (and stones, and flowers and mud). He’s a founder of the bush kinder program at Westgarth Kindergarten, the first outdoor play program in Victoria.

    Immersing children in unstructured free play in nature (like the bush, green spaces and gardens) has a myriad of benefits, according to a world-first Australian review of studies into nature play.

    Nature play improves children’s levels of physical activity, fitness, motor skills and social and emotional development, says University of South Australia researcher Kylie Dankiw.

    The study defined it as free play led by children without being guided by an educator or teacher, which took place in an area with natural elements like trees, rocks, water and sand.

    “These are all things that children love to do, but unfortunately, as society has become more sedentary, risk averse and time-poor, fewer children are having these opportunities,” says Ms Dankiw.

    There have always been educational theorists who believed being in nature was good for children, including Friedrich Fröbel, Maria Montessori and Rudolph Steiner, says Mr Fargher.

    But when he was doing teacher training in the 1980s, outdoor spaces weren’t considered a place of education: “Outdoors was seen as a place you go to run off all your energy, and then come back inside and learn.”

    Westgarth Kindergarten staff had to overcome bureaucratic roadblocks when they first proposed the bush kinder program a decade ago, but succeeded with the support of enthusiastic parents.

    FULL STORY

    Play program puts children in touch with nature (The Age)

    PHOTO

    Bush kinder educator Doug Fargher with children at the Darebin Parklands. Credit:Eddie Jim