OUTDOOR LEARNING
Exploring the great outdoors
As we move into the autumn months, we look at ways you can adventure outside with little ones while making the most of learning opportunities.
Once the summer sun starts to wane, it’s easy to get caught up thinking about staying snug inside while a chill tempers the air. But as September swings into view, it brings with it a swathe of sizzling colours, harvest festivals, cloudy skies, and crisp mornings.
So why not make the most of the autumn vibrancy and head outside? With fresh air and plenty of ways to stimulate the imagination, there’s lots of fun and learning to be had!
LEAF PLAY
Simple yet effective, you can do a lot with leaves. Why not try sorting them by colour, finding matching coloured or shaped leaves, or practise gross and fine motor skills by tracing the outside shape with a stick in the mud?
Carefully-inspected piles of leaves can also be good for jumping in – you could talk together about the noise and feel of the leaves, expanding vocabulary through modelling and scaffolding.
Create an autumn sensory box, focusing on finding things that stimulate different senses. Extend learning further by asking ‘why’ they’ve chosen certain things.
TINY WORLDS
It’s always a good time to teach little ones to appreciate and care for all living things. There are opportunities to search for different insects and discover where they like to live, talking about using kind hands and letting nature be.
Not only are there lots of discussion points – how are they similar/different to each other, what colours can you
see, why do you think they have that [feature]? – but you can also go minibeast spotting, counting up how many you can see, or build special minibeast hotels.
Even though the summer is over, there’s still time to catch flying minibeasts and talk about which flowers they like and why. You could also talk about how they are important to our food production!
A SPLASH OF MUD
Nature-based art is both messy and fun, while helping to teach children early on that art doesn’t just mean paper and paint – it can be anywhere and with anything.
Use tree trunks and wet mud to create mud portraits of each other: talk about what you can find to use for different features (grass or twigs for hair, pebbles or conkers for eyes), use language of shape to discuss each other’s features. Have a go at creating some natural ‘paint’ from things you can see, like berries, leaves, loose flower petals – how many different colours can you make?
POOLS AND PONDS
Wherever there are rock pools, there are usually lots of curious creatures hiding – talk about mini worlds (ecosystems) and how they all benefit each other in that habitat. What can you find? Why do you think they have… (a shell, lots of legs/no legs, bumpy skin)?
Use the world around you to create a soundscape. Close your eyes and talk about the different sounds you can hear – what are they? Which ones are nature sounds, how do you know? Look around, can you think of anything we can use to recreate those sounds?
Here, you can test out lots of different ideas together, comparing and using the same object in multiple ways i.e., two pebbles – bang together (hard vs soft), tap with other objects, rub together, scrape against a surface/other objects.
Play ‘will this float?’ – test out leaves, conkers, conker shells, twigs, grass, loose flowers, different stones/pebbles on puddles or shallow ponds/streams to see if they stay at the top or sink, then compare the items – why might have x floated while y sank? Focus particularly on their heaviness in your hand, the texture, the shape – at this point, simply stimulating thinking on these questions is enough to start the learning process.
STRUCTURAL MAYHEM
Build an obstacle course together with items around you – think about different levels/heights, types of movements to complete different elements.
Construct a den: how tall does it need to be, what items around us can we use, how do we make sure it stays up? There’s lots of scope for problem-solving and expanding spatial awareness here.
A stick may seem like the simplest of items, but there’s a reason both dogs and children are drawn to them: there’s a lot you can do with a stick! Imagine it’s a wizard’s staff – what spells could you cast?
In celebration of the seasonal shift, the National Trust is giving away a limited number of free, single-use visit passes for entry to select sites throughout the autumn months, giving more families the opportunity to experience the beauty of nature while also being immersed in different historical periods.
To claim your free pass, visit: nationaltrust.org.uk/autumn.
Terms and conditions apply.
GOING PLACES
At National Trust properties, there are lots of different ways to have some educational fun together outside (…and inside, too):
Portrait hunts – how do we know these are old? How do you know they’re from the past? How are we different to these people (fashion, hairstyle etc)? A good starting point is getting children familiar with the language of time – then/now, did/wore/would go/ate, used to/still.
If there are dressing up opportunities, you could see how closely you can dress up to match hanging portraits.
Architecture – what’s special about this building? How does this look different to our house?
Nature trails – creature spotting, ‘can you find these 5 things…?’