The Importance of Risky Play and Natural Environments for Children's Development

This article discusses the importance of allowing children to engage in risky play and natural environments for their overall development. It explores the benefits of outdoor play in natural surroundings, the current ideas and approaches, and the research on risk to achieve effective physical development. It also highlights the risks involved in promoting physical health and wellbeing of children and the importance of outdoor play in developing autonomy and individuality.

[DOCUMENT TITLE]
[DATE]

Introduction:
Children are mostly dependent upon their parents and are not allowed to make their own
decisions. As per the studies, if children were given the opportunity to make their own decisions
in deciding their playing environment then they would be more creative. The idea of allowing
children to design their playing environment or outdoor activities can also help in their overall
development or growth. But, the current scenario is different where the playgrounds are much
safer in comparison to adults who grew up in completely different environment. The present
current suggests to make more safety fall spaces and availability of all required equipment.
Although the safer environment is beneficial to the children but it does have negative impact as
these limit outdoor playgrounds which provides more learning opportunities for the children
(Laureng, 2016). The current paradigm of playground design also forbids the children rights to
experience the natural environment which not only offers air and sunlight like the modern
playgrounds but also offer animals, insects, water, vegetation. It is evident that children learn
more through discovery and free play is a broad concept which is self-motivated, pleasurable,
creative, imaginative, spontaneous, free of adult’s rule, active the quality play environment is not
only related to physical growth but it includes overall senses, fine motor, intellect, emotion,
growth and interaction (Norling & Sandberg, 2015).
Current ideas, beliefs and approaches:
It is evident that outdoor play in natural surroundings delivers a number of positives, comprising
prospects to learn physical talents, build endurance, societal skills, risk management, resilience,
admiration for mother nature etc. The teacher should ensure that children have access to outdoor
natural learning surroundings on regular basis. Approaches could initiate with trivial steps for
example implanting a root vegetable kitchen garden or making a ploughing area. Nevertheless,
changing outdoor surroundings requires to be built on regulatory codes and have need of
constant maintenance (Atinc & Wright, 2013). Decent outdoor learning environments are lively and
responsive. They mirror the local scenery and climate, back children’s interests and present
many play options. For example, a slant may put forward a rising and falling mound, a dripping
watercourse or implanted tyre steps. A windy place could turn into the location for small trees
that offer shielding shelter or wide-ranging experiences. Spatial measures are significant as well,
for example places planned for diverse types of play add curiosity and encourage continuous
engagement. Such as, smaller places may boost communication through sensory or symbolic
play with others and; uncluttered areas are likely to encourage several usages comprising
construction, ball games and low problem courses and spaces with soft-fall provision physical
activity for example climbing and swinging. By means of rocks, logs, plants, or hay bales to
make passageways and borders then that describe diverse play areas and encourage a more
harmonious surrounding for everybody.
An outdoor learning environment is not ever over. Teachers constantly work together

with families, colleagues and children to make and transform it (Aasen, Grindheim, & Waters,
2009). Teachers reflect on their educational methodologies outdoors, scrutinizing the methods
that they identify children as
change agents and active contestants for sustainability. Through challenging and authentic
outdoor environment children learn societal customs, and principles grow cognitive
and physical capabilities, creativeness, confidence and efficiency, basic interests, decisiveness,
restraint, discipline, regulate feelings, and sustain friendships.
Risky environment has been described as thrilling and exhilarating by way of there is a mental
and bodily challenge. Risky environment checks their physical limitations and helps them to
grow their perceptual motor ability as they learn to circumvent and adjust to risky events and
environments. As the surroundings are biological and natural they impact evolutionarily to
human changes and growth (White & Stoecklin, 2016). Children have also reported of being in high
spirits when in such an environment. In challenging and authentic outdoor environment,
activities like turning upside down the usual order of stuffs, tilting, dangling, circling, rising and
falling, etc. as these are unpredictable and instable it brings joy to the children. Risky play can be
described as an exhilarating as well as stimulating doings that includes a risk of bodily harm, and
activities that offers prospects aimed at challenge, testing parameters, exploring restrictions and
knowledge around risk of injury. The approaches are generally educator controlled, wood
working benches with actual tools and equipment for example saws, hammers and nails.
Children could be provided with plastic pipes, milk crates, large reels, ropes, lifters, wooden
boxes, twigs, woods etc. Children learn about the worth of fire and the reverence for its power by
igniting camp fire and cooking in fire pits under the supervision of teachers. Children are
permitted with to climb, jump and challenge their distinctive individual physical abilities. They
are allowed to use climbing gears in nontraditional manners for example mounting up the slide
rather than sliding down.
Current research on risk to achieve effective physical development:
Parental apprehensions on the subject of kids’ wellbeing have been revealed to be the most
noteworthy effect on kids’ access to free play. Studies have revealed that parents have been
aware that their initial constraints on kids’ activities has the probability to place their kids at
greater risk once they attain more freedom. Several studies point out that kids want to be
approved of their decisions regarding to the management of risks and wellbeing (Kiewra &
Veselack, 2016). In a particular U.K. research, emphasized group of people were accompanied
with 93 kids aged 7 to 11 age in years and residing in town and countryside regions. Outcomes
displayed that the kids felt intensely for being given chances for weighing risk aimed at
themselves. They produced characteristics replicating maturity and competency and that
comprised being capable to show their capability to cope with risks (Effective interventions and
strategies for improving Early Child Development, 2015). Undertaking Risks permitted them to
show bravery and bodily abilities to oneself and their friends. Remarkably, even though they saw
trivial wounds as an opportunity to demonstrate that they took risks, there existed a consideration
as well that many wounds pointed to negligence or ineptness, and that was seen in critical ways.
Hence, they seemed to have their peculiar controlling method for mitigating injuries and dangers
at a controllable level. Research puts forward that if kids observe they are not getting exciting

and stimulating risky play chances in community play spaces, they might search for these
prospects somewhere else (Lisset, 2012). These children were also more probable to have been
injured in the earlier month. Damage avoidance plays a significant role in maintaining safety of
children, but study puts forward that employing too many constraints on kids’ outside risky play
hampers their growth. Generational tendencies point out children’s shrinking involvement in
outdoor play is influenced by parental and social apprehensions. Children have a natural
inclination in the direction of risky play and maintaining safety of children comprises of
permitting them take and be able to alleviate risks themselves. Writings from numerous
disciplines backs the idea that wellbeing efforts ought to be well-adjusted using prospects for
youngster development through outside risky play (Miller, Tichota, & White, 2013). New ways
for exploration and action are evolving that seek best approaches to keep children as safe as
essential, but not safe to the extent imaginable. This model change signifies a probability aimed
at epistemological development along with different discipline partnership encourage best
youngsters’ growth although maintaining children’s safety.
There is indication that kids learn threat alleviating tactics for oneself and their friends as an
outcome of risk play involvements. Children put themselves to danger but showed clean tactics
to mitigate damage found observational research of children at play. Australian kids, for the
maximum time, engaged in activities that existed inside their present competencies. Children
seemed mindful of possible threats and attuned deeds as a result. Remarkably, children sketched
on their risk familiarities not merely to grow considerate of their own structures and abilities, but
also of those with whom they were playing. These considerations enabled care for one another’s
risk involvement and wellbeing (Outdoor learning in the early years , 2015). The aim should not
be to remove all risks, but to control damage, and explain how to mitigate risks. Researchers
have found that, recent decades have realized alterations in social views of children’s capabilities
and pliability. From one time seeing children as actively skillful and responsible, we have further
of late progressed to seeing them as insufficient in contrast to adults, progressing to formation of
an opinion that kids are required to be sheltered from their personal insufficiencies (Brussoni
M. , Why kids need risk, fear and excitement in play, 2017). These tendencies have added to
placing restrictions on children’s search and access to outdoor free play chances. In a similar
study observing the first choice of play and outdoor play area using apparatus of Australian girls
and boys of four to six years of age, the researchers noticed youngsters’ liking for apparatus and
actions that gave them the feelings of speed and heights for instance swings slides, climbing
ropes and monkey bars (Alliance, 2012). They similarly found that the apparatus at the five parks
researched gave few chances on mastering the present abilities, or aimed at learning different
fresh abilities. They determined that the apparatus delivered revealed the main concern of local
administration instead than that of the kids and their likings for risk play. The apprehension that
inadequate challenge can simply lead to dullness, possibly promoting wrong apparatus use and
extreme risk-taking behavior that is often related with accidental harm. The consequence of
parental and social worries and effects has been a drop in play spaces proposing kids chances to
explore their capabilities and thoughts. This is regardless of signs that worries are different with
tendencies presenting stable reductions in injury rates and the comparative fewness of outdoor
environment play associated deaths.

Risk involved in promoting physical health and wellbeing of children:
Each child is exceptional and so the extent of risk and challenge they are in should also be
different they look for will also be different, yet maximum children will actively search for risk
and challenge in play as they explore their own physical capabilities and the world around them.
The benefits for children from these necessities decreases if the child care experts
limit them instead of providing them challenging environments to play, where they can learn so
much. The ‘cotton wool’ method can result in over restricting boundaries on children’s right to
play, test, discover, and to spread themselves within an exciting, yet harmless environment.
Building determination and resilience improves bodily balance and coordination between body
and mind, recognition of the capabilities and limitations of their own bodies. The aptitude to
measure and make decision about risk make usage of tools in a safe manner and with purpose
(Brussoni & Pike, Risky Play and Children’s Safety: Balancing Priorities for Optimal Child
Development, 2012). When children are provided with chances to take part in challenging and
risky play in a safe learning environment, we arrange prospect for the growth of significant life
skill learnings for example decisiveness, ability to resolve problems, taking measured risk, and
steering their way in group circumstances emotionally and on a social basis. These abilities
would be significant right through life specifically in vulnerable phases for instance their teenage
years, so these activities would prepare them to face any eventuality.
Researches have delivered substantial proof that the way individuals feel in pleasant natural
environments makes improvement in ability to remember information and solving problem in a
creative way. Early familiarities with the nature have been positively associated with the growth
of the sense of curiosity and imagination. Curiosity is essential as it is a stimulus for learning
throughout the life (Yıldırım & Akamca, 2017). There is a solid proof that young children
respond in a more positive manner to outdoor experiences than a grown person as the children
would not have yet adjusted to indoor environments which is artificial, and unnatural. The
natural environment is crucial to the mental wellbeing of youngsters. Whilst youngsters require
helpful and encouraging mature interaction besides a feeling of association with the broader
society, they at the same time require encouraging interaction with natural environment and the
prospect for privacy and the notion of marvel that nature offers. As soon as children interact with
nature it is more possible for them to have affirmative state of mind about the environment and
one another.
Outdoor surroundings are similarly significant to youngsters' growth of autonomy and
individuality. Outside space permits kids to test bit by bit with growing distance from their
custodian (Solly, 2016). While the growth of greater individuality from middle childhood to
toddlerhood could occur inside the restrictions of interior spaces, not dangerous space outdoors
significantly improves the capability of children to naturally test with separation and
independence, and the grownup's preparedness and inclination to believe the kid's ability that is
crucial for separation to transpire (Zeng & Ayyub, 2017). This is mostly significant for children
who reside in crowded small houses.

Kids' outdoor play is not the same as time used up inside. The sensual experiences remain not the
same, and diverse principles of play is put on. Actions which may be restricted on indoors could
be allowed without harm outside. Kids have more liberty to make noise and run, in addition to
manipulating and interacting with the environment. Natural outside surroundings have merits
that are exceptional and attractive to children as play surroundings mostly their endless diversity;
the point that they are not made by adults; and their sensation of endlessness as in the sceneries,
trees, streams styled in legends and folklores still be existent in the present day. Children
experience the natural environment in a different way than grown-ups. Grownups normally
perceive nature as background for anything they are doing. Children perceive nature, not as
circumstantial for anything they are doing, but rather as a stimulator and practical component of
their activities. The natural environment is not a landscape or scene for a child. Natural
environment for the child is pure sensory knowledge. Children sense the natural situation not by
its aesthetics, instead by in what manner they could interact with the surroundings.
Kids have an exclusive, straight and practical method of understanding the natural environment
as a habitation of splendor, enigma and miracle. Kids' exceptional attraction for the natural
surroundings is related to the kid's progress and his or her method of perception and acceptance.
Vegetation, composed with sand, soil and water, offer situations that could be manipulated.
Children could form a channel in the soil and sand or a rock barrage in a small water tributary,
nonetheless there's not too many a child could do in a forest apart from climbing, hanging down,
swinging or falling off. Natural components offer flexible play that give emphasis to formless
innovative exploration with various materials (Brussoni & Gibbons, What is the Relationship
between Risky Outdoor Play and Health in Children? A Systematic Review, 2015). The high
levels of complication and diverse nature bids invite to time-consuming and more complicated
play. As a result of their interactive nature, vegetation inspires finding, theatrical fictitious play,
and imaginings. Plants, in a good-looking surroundings with a fusion of sun, darkness, color,
character, scent, and smoothness of attachment as well inspire a feeling of tranquility. Natural
surroundings propose potentials of directness, variety, handling, investigation, obscurity and
unruliness.
All the manmade apparatus and all the interior teaching resources created by the finest
instructors in the world can’t standby the chief experience of practical interaction with nature
(Brussoni & Brunelle, Can child injury prevention include healthy risk promotion?, 2015). They
can’t swap the sensual instant where a kid's focus is caught by the marvels and constituents of
natural surroundings: the spotted sparkle that sunbeams offer through leaves, the movement and
sound of vegetation in the current of air, the view of butterfly or a settlement of ant, the creative
realms of a plot of mud, soil or beach sand, the unending sensual experience of river, the
immeasurable space in an iris blossom.
Conclusion:
From this paper, it is evident that outdoor activities and risky environment can help in the overall
development or growth of children. Providing challenging and authentic outdoor environments
for toddlers and preschoolers delivers a number of positives, comprising prospects to learn
physical talents, build endurance, societal skills, risk management, resilience etc. Outside
surroundings are also significant to kids' growth of autonomy and individuality. Risk plays is an

essential element for strong growth of youngster and assessment the proof for advices that back
the necessity for outside risk play. Risky environment helps children in promoting physical
health and wellbeing of youngsters. It helps to check their physical limitations and helps them to
grow their perceptual motor ability as they learn to circumvent and adjust to risky events and
environments. Taking risks also permitted them to show bravery and physical skills to
themselves and their friends. As soon as children interact with nature it is more possible for them
to have affirmative state of mind about the environment and one another.
References
Aasen, W., Grindheim, L. T., & Waters, J. (2009). The outdoor environment as a site for
children's participation, meaning-making and democratic learning: examples from
Norwegian kindergartens. International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years
Education , 37(1), 5-13.
Alliance, P. (2012). Create the Perfect Play Space Learning Environments for Young Children.
Retrieved from Learning Environments for Young Children:
https://www.ecrh.edu.au/docs/default-source/resources/ipsp/Create-the-perfect-play-
space-learning-environments-for-young-children.pdf?sfvrsn=12
Atinc, T. M., & Wright, E. (2013, November 25). Early Childhood Development: the Promise,
the Problem, and the Path Forward. Retrieved from Brookings:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/early-childhood-development-the-promise-the-
problem-and-the-path-forward/
Brussoni, M. (2017, August 2). Why kids need risk, fear and excitement in play. Retrieved from
The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/why-kids-need-risk-fear-and-excitement-
in-play-81450
Brussoni, M., & Brunelle, S. (2015). Can child injury prevention include healthy risk promotion?
NCBI, 21(5), 344-347.
Brussoni, M., & Gibbons, R. (2015). What is the Relationship between Risky Outdoor Play and
Health in Children? A Systematic Review. International Journal Environment Research
Public Health, 12(6), 6423-6454.
Brussoni, M., & Pike, I. (2012). Risky Play and Children’s Safety: Balancing Priorities for
Optimal Child Development. International Journal Environment Research Public Health,
9(9), 3134–3148.
Effective interventions and strategies for improving Early Child Development. (2015). Retrieved
from EWEC technical content workstream working group on early child development:
https://www.everywomaneverychild.org/images/08__ECD_background_paper_for_Glob
al_Strategy_FINAL_2015-03-23.pdf
Kiewra, C., & Veselack, E. (2016). Supporting Preschoolers’ Creativity in Natural Outdoor
Classrooms. The International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education,

4(1), 71.
Laureng. (2016, October 26). Challenge and risk in children’s play – Is it worth the Risk?
Retrieved from Early Learning Services Commited to Child Care:
https://www.earlylearningservices.com.au/2016/10/26/challenge-risk-childrens-play/
Lisset, E. (2012). The value of risky play at natural outdoor environment to develop children’s
relationship. Retrieved from International Master of Early Childhood Education and
Care: https://www.hioa.no/content/download/24985/319246/file/Erika.pdf
Miller, D. L., Tichota, K., & White, J. (2013). Young Children’s Authentic Play in a Nature
Explore Supports Foundational Learning: A Single Case Study . Retrieved from
Dimensions Research:
https://dimensionsfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/youngchildrenauthenticpla
y.pdf
Norling, M., & Sandberg, A. (2015). Language Learning in Outdoor Environments: Perspectives
of preschool staff. JOURNAL OF NORDIC EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
RESEARCH VOL. , P. , 9(1), 1-16. Retrieved from
https://journals.hioa.no/index.php/nbf/article/download/749/1164/
Outdoor learning in the early years . (2015, February 25). Retrieved from The benefits of
outdoor learning and outdoor activities for children:
https://earlyyearsoutdooreducation.wordpress.com/outdoor-risky-play-for-all/
Solly, K. (2016). Risk and Challenge in the Early Years. Retrieved from Quality & Diversity:
http://nationaleducationtrust.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Kathryn-Solly-
Presentation.pdf
White, R., & Stoecklin, V. (2016, June 25). Children's Outdoor Play & Learning Environments:
Returning to Nature. Retrieved from White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group:
https://www.whitehutchinson.com/children/articles/outdoor.shtml
Yıldırım, G., & Akamca, G. Ö. (2017). The effect of outdoor learning activities on the
development of preschool children. South African Journal of Education, Volume 37,
Number 2, May 2017, 37(2), 1-7.
Zeng, N., & Ayyub, M. (2017). Effects of Physical Activity on Motor Skills and Cognitive
Development in Early Childhood: A Systematic Review. BioMed Research International,
1-13.