Recently Ziggy, my daughter’s award-winning rescue dog, travelled to Nature’s Atelier to check out the logs and hills of the newly constructed outdoor space. He was very impressed with the large fallen tree we had transported to the site and enjoyed posing on the log with Tia and James.
When exploring or playing children particularly like to chance upon logs and trees which give opportunities for balancing, scrambling, climbing and for imaginative play. They also provide a focus just to sit and talk.
All children know that rolling down hills is probably one of the very best things you can do when playing outside. All teachers know that rolling down hills will help:
- Vestibular Development which they need to improve their balance
- Midline Crossover helps us become physically better coordinated and mentally with the act of thinking, and later reading.
- Sensory Development, which helps in creating understanding of the world – like up and down, and danger or hazards and risk taking.
- Gross Motor Development as we build strength
- and proprioception, the tactile understanding of space.
Running and walking up and down different slopes develops muscle strength and awareness of how your body works. Ziggy gave the hills an excellent workout to make sure that they were helping him develop.
The world looks very different from a high perspective. Children and adults alike enjoy this different view of life from time to time. Looking at the world from the hills or through the eyes of a bird just makes the spaces and environments more enchanting and opens up new wonderings and understandings of how the world works. They can discover gravity and the properties of different
materials, consider the trajectory of objects, the feeling of success when they crawl, walk, run and roll down a hill. Our spaces did not have hills six weeks ago, now, by transferring soil from a different part of the property, we have wonderful hills for all to discover.
At Nature’s Atelier, we are developing environments to support the whole child, from every perspective. Oh, and Ziggy ended his day being exhausted from the exercise, so I think all in all he has approved the Nature’s Atelier outside environment.
At Nature’s Atelier we are developing environments to support the whole child, from every perspective. Oh, and Ziggy ended his day being exhausted from the exercise so I think all in all he has approved the Nature’s Atelier outside environment.
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