‘Etuaptmumk’ or Two-Eyed Seeing is the gift of multiple perspectives in the Mi’kmaw language. A key practice of this in an early childhood outdoor program is walking together and sharing stories.
Teachers in a study shared how they solve the challenges they meet when leading outdoor education.
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Problems include no fields, no courts for games, no playgrounds, no bike racks and no traffic-calming surrounding the school. Bringing in minimum standards is important.
Many teachers want to lead outdoor learning, but face barriers.
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Some school districts now accept year-long consent forms in which guardians can consent for children to participate in neighbourhood walks at any time in the school year.
Beyond the many known benefits of outdoor education, COVID-19 has highlighted the outdoors as an environment which mitigates the risk of spreading airborne viruses.
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Planning outdoor early learning and child care has implications for training and recruiting educators as well as for planning, developing and funding physical spaces.
An orientation week organizer wearing a shirt promoting physical distancing of two metres sits in a new outdoor ampitheatre at Université de Sherbrooke piloted this past fall.
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Université de Sherbrooke introduced 10 new outdoor classrooms during COVID-19 and created a guide about outdoor teaching. It will fine-tune outdoor teaching in response to student feedback.
Insects are an inexpensive and effective way to teach children about science.
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Insects are plentiful and inexpensive. Even when children aren’t attending school in person, they can learn from the encounters they have with insects outside.
Policymakers could seize this time to support schools in choosing to take students outside.
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Moving classes outside deserves serious consideration not only for better ventilation, but also to introduce more education devoted to learning on, from and with the land.
The COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity for us to rethink and redesign how schools support children’s social connections and opportunities for informal play and recreation.
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Global experts in child development say recess will be critical for children’s well-being when schools reopen, so education authorities should see planning recess as a high priority.
Scotland is making strides in improving its population’s social and physical well-being — by taking children’s early learning and care outside.
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Scotland is undertaking a child-care initiative to double the number of fully funded child-care hours available to parents, and outdoor play is part of it.
Children in the Willows forest nature program in the Humber Valley in west Toronto are drawn to water and sticks, simple materials for exploring and investigating. Here the children explore water accumulated from spring rains.
(Louise Zimanyi)
When parents walk in the forest with their children and us and see how children are drawn to spiral snails, together we see how connections with the land are critical for the Earth’s future.