The Importance of outdoor play for heathy child development

Active free play in the outdoors has become a rarity, a thing of the past. Children are leading increasingly virtual lives, spending more time staring at screens, and it’s no surprise that along with this doctors have noticed an increase in sensory and emotional disorders. In her book Balanced and Barefoot, paediatric occupational therapist Angela Hanscom explains the importance that unrestrained outdoor play has in nurturing healthy child development.

Children thrive outdoors. The antidote to our virtual world, outdoor play engages all the senses and encourages children to challenge their bodies and minds. Instead of restraining and over scheduling kids’ lives, Hanscom urges parents and teachers to reintroduce free play, allowing children to be self-driven and self-directed. In doing so, outdoor play will help ensure that your kids will grow in healthy, balanced, and resilient individuals.

But what sort of outdoor play is most beneficial for children?  In Balanced and Barefoot, Hanscom gives us the following handy list of specific outdoor experiences that will ignite a variety of senses.

PROMOTE BAREFOOT BABES

Let your children go barefoot as much as possible both indoors and outdoors. If they have to wear shoes, consider slippers or minimalist shoes that allow the arches of the feet to receive input from both natural and man-made surfaces.

GO FRUIT OR BERRY PICKING

Many farms offer seasonal pick-your-own edibles, from blueberries and strawberries to pumpkins and apples. Not near a farm? Try food-oriented festivals and farmers markets, where children can sample different items while having fun outdoors. Making a cake or muffins with your children using the fresh berries they picked is a meaningful sensory experience. Children not only learn where food comes from but they engage their senses of smell, sight, hearing, taste, and proprioception (joint and muscle sense) as they mix, measure, and taste the mix.

GARDEN WITH CHILDREN

Gardening with children offers many sensory benefits. They get to dig in the dirt, use a watering can, nurture living plants, taste fresh foods, learn to tolerate new textures, and broaden their food horizon. Smelling the herbs and flowers they grow is also a great olfactory (smell) experience.

GO BIRDING

Identifying different bird sounds is a great auditory skill. Offer children a bird identification book so they can learn to look up the birds that they hear and see. Teach them how to make birdcalls using only their hands and voice.

PLAY IN THE DARK

Playing a game such as hide and seek in the dark offers a challenging sensory experience. Many children rely heavily on their visual system to navigate their surroundings. When this is taken away, the balance and proprioceptive  systems need to work harder to keep children upright and coordinated as they travel through the dark. Also, lying down and hiding during a game of hide and seek gets children up close and personal with leaves, dirt, and other tactile experiences. Furthermore, because they are in play, they will often tolerate things they wouldn’t normally tolerate (lying down on wet leaves, playing in the dark), especially when playing with other children.

INTERACT WITH ANIMALS

Caring for animals both big and small exposes children to a lot of different textures, smells, sounds, and sights. Therapists have used dogs and horses and other animals for many years in order to work on all sorts of physical, emotional, and intellectual skills with children. Farm animals, such as sheep, cows, goats, chickens, and pigs, offer children a variety of sensory input. However, even a cat or a hamster can offer great sensory experiences.

PLAY AT THE BEACH

The beach is a whole-body experience that stimulates the senses of touch (sand, water, varying temperatures), proprioception (digging in the dirt), hearing (birds, crashing waves), seeing (scurrying crabs, landing seagulls), and vestibular (reaching down to fill a bucket with water, running on the soft sand).

IN A NUTSHELL

While man-made environments may excite children, they may overwhelm or overstimulate them. Indoor environments can also under-stimulate and offer few sensory benefits to children. The great outdoors, on the other hand, offers limitless possibilities for play experiences and exploration of the senses, enhancing and refining the senses through repeated practice. It is through daily play outdoors that your children will challenge and strengthen their senses of touch, vision, hearing, smell, taste, and much more!