Why outdoors?
Our calming outdoor space helps children feel centred and secure. The garden is a beautiful mix of open space, woodland areas with ancient oak trees, animal paddocks and a meadow. Designed with children in mind, the smells, sounds, textures and areas to explore are endless and large enough for walk-and-talk sessions without leaving the safety of the grounds.
The treehouse, vegetable garden, climbing frame, slide, swing, sunken trampoline, mud kitchen, water play, loose parts play, bug hotel, steppingstones, tunnel, pond, sand pit, and den, all add to the environment. Children can paint outdoors on the easels and collect natural materials to create with. The treehouse veranda has an excellent vantage point from which to paint or simply sit and talk.
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Being connected to nature can reduce illnesses; improve mood; benefit mental wellbeing; and restore attention capacity. Our wildlife-friendly, beautiful space helps us slow down and breathe. It helps children break away from overstimulation, take risks, unleash their creativity, and gives them a chance to exercise, play, explore, discover, learn, and grow. Children particularly benefit from exploring the outdoor environment - it helps increase confidence and self-esteem. With wellbeing and health at the forefront of what we do here, just being in nature helps. There is also a useful mix of familiarity and development - with the shifting of the seasons, every week there is something new and exciting to explore.
Activities related to nature increase children’s connection significantly more than just walking in nature, and this helps with formulating a sense of self. The contact with natural materials through our activities leads to an increased connection to, and positive relationship with, nature - benefiting our children, and nature too. Through working with children and young people in this way, we are helping to create a generation with a strong connection with nature and the environment - they are more likely to take action to protect and restore it. Experiencing and valuing the positive impact nature has on their own lives will increase desire to care for, cherish and protect our environment & wild places and protect our planet from destruction.
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