Health & Wellbeing in Early Childhood: Outdoor Environment Report

This report delves into the crucial role of outdoor environments in fostering health and wellbeing in early childhood, focusing on toddlers and pre-schoolers. It examines current ideas, beliefs, and approaches to creating authentic outdoor spaces, emphasizing the significance of risk-taking in promoting physical skills, health, and overall development. The report highlights the value of outdoor play in enhancing children's learning, social interaction, and physical capabilities, while also addressing the challenges and parental concerns surrounding risky play. Furthermore, it explores the research on physical development outcomes and the need for unstructured physical activity. The report concludes by emphasizing the long-term benefits of providing children with continuous opportunities for exploration and learning in outdoor settings.

Health & Wellbeing in
Early Childhood
1

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
1: Current idea, beliefs and approaches to authentic outdoor environment for children.............3
2: Current research risk to achieve effective physical development outcomes...........................5
3: Justify the value of risk taking during promoting physical skills, health and well-being for
children........................................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9
2

INTRODUCTION
Health and wellbeing is a most indispensable factor for every individual whether he/she
is toddler, pre-schooler, and teenager, adult or aged. The only difference is that extra care is
required in early childhood and aged phase because these phases of life are very much delicate
one as one is a beginning whereas another is the end. But somehow, early childhood really need
extra precautions and attentiveness because kids are very small as they even don’t have any idea
about right or wrong. Basically, early childhood is a stage of kids under 5 years in which they are
going through social, cognitive, emotional and physical development. Simply, it’s a basic stage
where growth and education opportunities are influenced by surrounding as well as social factors
(Grall Reichel, 2017). Generally, healthy development in early childhood support kids in
building strong educational backgrounds which further act in a positive way such as; strong base
sharpens the mind of a kid, availability of lots of success opportunities, numerous options for
future goals and so on.
Along with this, physical growth is also depending upon the diet of early childhood such
as; according to the Doctor prescription milk of mother is very much important for kids instant
and lifelong growth. Therefore, main objective of this assignment is to highlight the significance
of outdoor environment for toddlers and pre-schoolers with the help of several examples.
Additionally, report will outline the existing beliefs, ideas and approaches which requires for
offering best outdoor surrounding for kids. Moreover, risky play is also going to explained in the
assignment for understanding its impact, need and effectiveness upon children’s. It means that,
overall project will surround with the data related with development of early childhood by using
distinct sources.
MAIN BODY
1: Current idea, beliefs and approaches to authentic outdoor environment for children
Early childhood setting plays an eminent role in developing health and a feeling of
wellbeing for children, their family as well as their society. In fact, the primary motive of health
and wellbeing is to get attention or support from their parents. Risk-taking in kids is a crucial
aspect of childhood growth and development which would develop confidence, resilience’s and
innovation in children to set their own limitation. It is important to create such an environment
that could enhance children’s development by learning and playing games (Greenman, 2005).
3

The way physical activities is designed has impact the children regarding their feeling, act and
behaviour. It would allow growth and overall development by organizing activities in defined
played areas. However, adult tends to impose restriction on risky play which is often justified on
the grounds of safety with children that are being banned from a wide range of experience like
running on school play and outside grounds. Everyday toddlers and pre-schoolers life is full of
risk and a specific challenge that need opportunities to develop the ability related with
overseeing risk and make informed decision regarding risk from a young age. The time period
between the ages of 3 to 8 years is considered as early childhood stage. In case the child is born,
its parents do plenty of things to ensure that that their kid is healthy and fit. It has been suggested
that it may be over-protective as well as its child need more growth or learning opportunities for
risky play outdoors (Le Masurier and Corbin, 2006). It will increase the physical capabilities,
social, resilience and self-confidence for their future survival. Professional experience is always
a dilemma created between safeties that could results in children being safe from taking risks in
their play. Hereby, curtailing the desired development can provide advantage during their play.
The concept of risky play is analyzed in a wide range of nations that indicate some cross-
cultural commonalities of this nature of play. Both observations disclose that kid’s emotional
experience in risky play range from pure excitement by fear at the similar time to pure fear.
Moreover, it is adverse that children could not design their outdoor play environment. In case the
children have the proper format to do so, their creation will be entirely changed from the areas
such as playground. It is an effective principle in early childhood learning that kids learn best by
free play and invention (Sandseter, 2013). The primary idea behind providing pleasant
environment between the toddlers is to increase their learning skills and give them a right
direction in which they become stronger from their early stage. Furthermore, children lives has
been structured and planned by their parents that keeps the mistaken belief that this sport or
lesson would make its children more successful as they become adults.
Risk benefits approach tend to encourages practitioners to provide kids that kind of
experiences those are less risky in their play through evaluating the developmental benefits of
risk-taking habits (Martin van Rooijen and Shelly Newstead, 2017). There are crucial stages in
which their parents need to take care of their child more wisely so that they can get better
learning experience. Nowadays, they have very little time for free play and it is often spend their
time in the house in front of the TV or any other digital equipments. For few kids, that’s because
4

their house has no outdoor play areas where they can play freely. It has been seen that children
tend to enjoy with those environment that are more flexible, where equipment could functions in
various ways such as balls, sandboxes and many more. Plenty of these material provided by their
parents could not be used to promote engagements at the outdoor. However, this approach to
convincing young of the benefits of risk for kids disregards in different complex factors in their
regular practices. Childcares along with their learning experience involve a tough web of
relationship, practices, norms and legalization. There is always need for outdoor platform for the
early child that includes manipulative activity, physical aspects, nature, social and art, whereas
some other material those are provided by their parents can be taken into account to guide
engagement at outdoors. A quiet outdoor value areas consists of baskets of books in the shade
under a tree are some good examples to provide effective learning base for the toddlers. An
emotional approach tends to allow families to meet the children need at the home (Nichols,
2000). Therefore, all these things have long-term experienced that have an effect on their later
life. Thus, it is important to provide proper support of their physical activities that can help in
growing their skills and increase their moral for the future. For example, it is important for their
parents to provide proper support to responsive care giving and increase independence as well as
feelings of competence in early children. Further, they need to promote children engagement
during their outdoor play.
2: Current research risk to achieve effective physical development outcomes
Risk in play is considered as any physical injury that occurs to a child during the course
of any activity or action. However, it provides huge opportunities for challenges, exploring areas
and learning regarding injury risk. The governing bodies along with the guiding report has also
support the advantage or risky play for children. Moreover, the potential aspects for children
from these needs are overcome if child care professional take into account the use of them to a
certain limit in the way of their interest. Risk taking is taken into account as the vital part of kid’s
play. In order to deal with that risk, it is a key to create opportunities that support their individual
growth as well as development that keep children safe from difficult risk and injury (Adams and
Thompson, 2002).
Activity play tends to be a vital aspect for kid’s physical development. It would assist child
hone its coordination, gross-motor skills and balance. However, physical activities used to
promote healthy growth as well as development of their children. It will also guide in building a
5

healthier body structure, strong bones and muscles. It is a vital ways to improve the kid’s
cardiovascular fitness. Physical activity during the time of early childhood is more imperative for
their optimal growth as well as development and relationship between quality of life and activity
performed by the child (Brewer, 2012). It happens to entirely up to their parents that can provide
healthy growth through creating innovative opportunity to practices latest skills and promoting
healthy eating behaviour during their crucial childhood period. Childhood sedentary attitude is
considered as a tough system that emerged during the economic growth and globalization of the
marketplace. In the current society, meeting physical activity rules has no longer happens
without proper concentrated efforts. In the current scenario, parents are quite busy in managing
various desires of people around them, especially their children. Some key activities are
mentioned below:
 They need to provide a pleasant environment to encourage lots of time and space for
energetic and loud play.
 Stretching exercise should also being taught such as wiggle their toes, legs, arms and
fingers.
 At the time of playing ball, it has been ask to the child to make use of alternate feet for
kicking or while playing cricket games.
 Avoid them to involve in inactivity by limiting to view TV and video games to less than
hours a day.
Children are liable to be more active during they are present in outdoors instead than they
are indoors. Physical activities would be associated with the young children’s lives to develop a
base of movement as well as activity that will be carried with them during their rest of their
coming lives. According to the national association for sport and education suggests that children
tend to receive a total of 60 min of unstructured physical activity per day in extra to 60 min of
structured activity per day (Pienaar, Barhorst and Twisk, 2013). Sedentary behaviour are related
with negative health results in children. It need little energy expenses and refers to any activity
completed in a seated posture or lying during the body is awake. It can help the child to become
physical strong, mentally stable and emotionally develop through taking active part in physical
activities. The growing utilization of technology and classrooms as well as daycares aimed on
mental events rather than physical events have led to the reduction of kid’s movement. For
examples, the toddlers and pre-schoolers need to consider reaching, rolling, crawling and
6

climbing. These skills consist of smaller and more precise movement of the hands such as
grasping. An educator could encourage kids to take active part in physical activity.
3: Justify the value of risk taking during promoting physical skills, health and well-being for
children
Benefits of outdoor play
It’s really important that toddlers and pre-schoolers get instant and continuous
opportunities for exploration and learning in outdoor surrounding without setting it as an
optional. In present era, there has been a major shift in society which reduces the access and
usage of outdoors for kids because parents are getting scared for children’s safety due to the
technological advancement such as; presence of high voltage settings at houses. On the other
hand, playing outside gives numerous of opportunities for kindergarten such as; experiencing the
society from distinct senses by getting involved in several activities (Dwyer, Higgs, Hardy and
Baur, 2018). Learning from outdoor gives healthy and active lifestyle to the children’s as they
get an opportunity to perform physical activities with full freedom because at home kids are
restricted to do any activity as parents feel that expensive items might get destroyed.
Outdoor learning space provides great opportunity for the kids to engage in open-ended
and meaningful experience that are linked to nature. It is a feature of Australian learning
environment. They usually provide a wide range of possibilities which is not available in the
indoors. However, play space in natural climate consists of plants, trees, sand rocks and other
valuable elements from nature (Early Childhood Educ, 2015). This will increase great
appreciation of the nature atmosphere as well as develop awareness that provide a platform for
ongoing natural learning.
As kids tend to develop such kind of skills, minor injuries that are more common part of
their growth process. In many children experience would falls as it learn to walk, climb, jump
and explore their physical situation (Department for Education and Child Development, 2015). A
downfallen tree can manage the cost of moving for a five-year-old, and creeping under for a
three-year-old. An open garden can manage the cost of play battling among four-year-olds and
fast paced running for two-year-olds. The affordance and motivation of play are both reliant on
the qualities of the play condition and the attributes of the person who analysed it.
7

Using real tools: It usually provide a great experience for the children for tinkering,
constructing, cutting and other activities. Most of the adult size tools could be too heavy for
small kids, so using the size of tools to the skills of user would allow greater growth opportunity.
Benefit:
 It would attempting hard and tough work as well as encourages perseverance.
 It derives self-satisfaction and attainment of having mastered use of a real tool.
 Provides children with reliable learning experience.
Climbing Trees: This tends to a rite of passage for kids as well as entire site offered a
tree climbing experience at various level of risk. It highlight the ability for kids to assess they are
comfortable physical exercise for the kids (Bowden, Band and Gray, 2011)
Benefits:
 It Provide a tactile and sensory experience.
 It would also encourage overall development of fine and gross motor ability.
 It gives great confidence and laying potential base for the children to learn innovative
skills and risk.
Stick and loose parts: It has been seen that most of the children whether belong to any
ages are drawn to lose parts to play because they are un-prescriptive. A stick could be a writing
implement a horse to be ride, a laser and guitar. These are ultimate source for powerful learning
that allow kids to a level best (Burgert, 2012).
Benefits:
 They are most effectively provide children to move, stack and construct them according
to their requirements
 It would also offers endless growth for imaginative as well as creative play
 Motivate teamwork and social skills as child move towards a positive environments
Plants: It has been seen that even their parents have a garden a few little plants in pots
would make certain changes and provide great opportunity for play. It is primary responsibility
of child family to create a little fairy garden in the tub that can attract the child toward them so
that beautiful fragrance or colour of flowers can bring smile on their face. It tends to a basic
lesson in caring for things that can protect them and increase their moral to survive in any tough
situation (Hill and Bundy, 2014). For example, outdoor play for toddler tends to deal with
8

various games such as, throwing & chasing balls, wheeling or pushing various types of objects
and blowing bubbles as well as moving along with them as they float away.
CONCLUSION
From the above essay, it has been summarized that extra care and attentiveness is really
indispensable for human beings in their early childhood because it’s a base for every individual
as learning in this stage is useful over lifelong. For example; habit of kid during initial phase is
remember him/her till entire stage, playing of cricket by toddler is remembered and loved that
things and many more. Thus, this essay proven that parents, relatives and teachers are
responsible for the development of their child because kids do all the things whatever he/she is
observing in daily routine. For instance; if a father of a kid is beating his/her mother then he/she
might do so just to follow the same thing, if a teacher is continuously greeting someone by
handshaking then a child will also follow that thing and many more activities are happened in
day-to-day life which is followed by a child through observation. Hence, it has been understood
that early childhood is a stage of overall growth of a kid due to which parents and teachers needs
to give extra case to them by creating positive indoor and outdoor environment for physical,
mental, emotional and social enhancement. Although, every parents love their kids but strictness
is also important for future betterment as it will maintain a disciplinary environment around the
children’s. Thus, information of projects shows that 360-degree development is really significant
in which outdoor plays a very important role in the mental, social and physical growth of kids.
As a result, every parents needs to take necessary steps for their kid’s bright future instead of
getting emotional.
9

REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
1. Adams, J., & Thompson, M. (2002). Taking account of societal concerns about risk.
London: HSE.
2. Bowden, A, Band, L & Gray, B. (2011), Climbing Trees: Getting Aussie Kids Back
Outdoors, Planet Ark for Toyota Australia.
3. Brewer TJ (2012) Rousseau plays outside in Norway: a personal reflection on how
Norwegian outdoor kindergartens employ Rousseauian pedagogical methods of play.
International Journal of Play. 1(3). 231–241.
4. Burgert, N. (2012). Playing outside: Are child care centers letting our kids down? In the
News, Safety and Kids, Toddlers and Preschoolers. Retrieved 26 September, 2016, from
www.kckidsdoc.com/kc-kids-doc/playing-outside-are-child-care-centers-lettingour-kids
down.html.
5. Department for Education and Child Development, (2015), Outdoor Learning areas:
Guide to the education risk benefit assessment.
6. Dwyer, G., Higgs, J., Hardy, L., & Baur, L. (2018). What do parents and preschool staff
tell us about young children’s physical activity: A qualitative study. International Journal
of Behavioral 344
7. Early Childhood Educ J (2015) 43:337–345 123. Nutrition and Physical Activity, 5, 66.
doi:10.1186/1479-5868-5-66.
8. Grall Reichel, A, (2017). Learning to Care: The Promise of Experiential Learning in
Nature for Young Children, Children & Nature Network.
9. Greenman J. (2005). Caring spaces, Learning places: Children’s environments that work.
Redmond, WA: Exchange Press.
10. Hill, A., & Bundy, A. C. (2014). Reliability and validity of a new instrument to measure
tolerance of everyday risk for children. Child: Care, Health and Development. 40(1). 68–
76. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2214.2012.01414.x
11. Le Masurier, G., & Corbin, C. B. (2006). Top 10 reasons for quality physical education.
Journal of Physical Education Recreation and Dance. 77(6). 44–53.
10

12. Martin van Rooijen & Shelly Newstead (2017). Influencing factors on professional
attitudes towards risk-taking in children’s play: a narrative review, Early Child
Development and Care, 187:5-6, 946-957, DOI: 10.1080/03004430.2016.1204607
13. Nichols, G. (2000). Risk and adventure education. Journal of Risk Research. 3(2).
14. Pienaar, A. E., Barhorst, R., & Twisk, J. W. R. (2013). Relationships between academic
performance, SES school type and perceptual-motor skills in first grade South African
learners: NW-CHILD study. Child: Care, Health, and Development. 40(3). 370–378.
15. Sandseter, E. B. H. (2013). Early childhood education and care practitioners' perceptions
of children's risky play; examining the influence of personality and gender. Early Child
Development and Care. 184(3). 434-449. doi: 10.1080/03004430.2013.794797
11