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28.5: Strategies for Maximizing Outdoor Learning Opportunities for Infants and Toddlers

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  • Page ID
    142492

    • Amanda Taintor
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    Using Outdoor Time Wisely

    The outdoors offers rich learning opportunities for infants and toddlers. Whether in outdoor play spaces, backyards, parks, or on front stoops, these opportunities take shape and place through relationships and interactions between caring, supportive adults and children. Infants and toddlers take their cues from the significant adults in their lives. They are more likely to respond positively and explore the outdoor environment when adults plan for, model, and support those explorations. Because staff and families play an essential role in connecting infants and toddlers to nature and the outdoors, program leaders must consider ways to facilitate and strengthen adult engagement with outdoor play and exploration.

    Loose Parts

    Caregivers can use "loose parts" Dempsey and Strickland, "Why to Include Loose Parts"; Greenman et al., Prime Times, 297 to enhance outdoor play opportunities for infants and toddlers. The term refers to "easily moved materials that children may use while playing." Dempsey and Strickland, "Why to Include Loose Parts." For infants and toddlers, loose parts are toys and materials that are safe, not fixed in place, and can be used in many ways. They are materials that children collect, put together, mix, separate, stack, fill and dump, and line up. Indoor toys, equipment, and materials brought outside are considered loose parts, as are natural materials such as tree cookies, stones, twigs, seedpods, leaves, water, and sand. Other ideas for loose parts include:

    • Fabric
    • Containers
    • Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes
    • Sponges
    • Wagons
    • Small sleds
    • Plastic milk crates
    • Backpacks
    • Wide, sanded boards that are short enough for toddlers to pick up, carry, or drag

    Loose parts are important for several reasons. Dempsey and Strickland, "Why to Include Loose Parts." They:

    • Encourage children to manipulate the environment and provide opportunities for creativity and problem-solving.
    • Provide children with age-appropriate materials. Because these materials can be used in a variety of ways, each age group uses the materials in different and appropriate ways.
    • Add novelty into the outdoor play environment. This is important for cognitively higher levels of play, such as symbolic play.
    • Foster a wide variety of play behaviors, such as dumping and filling; lifting, moving, and carrying; and pretend, parallel, and cooperative play.

    This page titled 28.5: Strategies for Maximizing Outdoor Learning Opportunities for Infants and Toddlers is shared under a mixed 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Amanda Taintor.