Children Outdoors Inspiration!

 

 I spent today listing to the inspirational speakers Claire Warden and Niki Buchan who are leaders in Early Childhood Education, they are known around the world for their work in reconnecting children with nature.

 

What a play ground!

As I listened it struck me that our Compassion children suffer from many things, poverty, lack of clean water, lack of clothes, lack of safe homes, parents with no work or low incomes, malnutrition, lack of basic resources but in one way their life styles echo what our children lives lack. They don’t have the resources, like mega amounts of shop bought toys the TV and electronic games our children have. Their playground is the natural environment with rocks, sticks, sand and mud, climbing trees and helping out with household chores that involve 100% nature. These children face mighty challenges yet you see the joy in their faces as they play and there is not a commercial toy in sight.

Kingston Beach

 

I think we can learn a lot from these children and listening to Claire and Niki today made this all the more clear. Claire talked about boys needing to play with toy guns and bows and arrows  as this was part of their brain structure a basic instinct to them, from role play they begin to understand the real world. Claire talked about many centres and schools banning “Superheros” but research shows that boys need this type of role play to develop and it is just as important as fairy dress ups and ballerina costumes. She spoke on how we tended to often provide opportunities from the girls interests like home corners and dolls but we tend to over look the boys who would like toy hammers, tools etc as they are seen as dangerous.

 

In the developed world we tend to wrap our children in cotton wool all to worried about the dangers of every day life that we end up depriving our children of a healthy childhood. We make sure there is no danger by putting up high fences, draining puddles, putting soft fall everywhere and keeping climbing structures to a minimum or not at all. Swings have been removed from most schools yet research show that a child needs rhythmic motion to help the brain develop. Children are discouraged from climbing in case they fall or can’t achieve it so feel failure.

 

Claire believes we should be teaching our children to manage danger themselves, learn to make their own judgements on how high to climb or if they should jump a puddle– we are not preparing our children for life if they never have to make choices and feel a little ‘failure’-or more to the point, if something didn’t work  they will try again using another strategy– not failure!

 

Our Compassion children do this every day, many of them are home alone with siblings while parents work, they play in their environment without adults wrapping them in cotton wool, they learn to risk manage, enjoy the land they live in, run, jump and skip becoming strong and responsible. Their world is terrible on so many fronts but enjoying the environment and staying safe in it is something they could teach our children.

 

If you ever get the chance to listen to Claire Warden or Niki Buchan speak I would encourage you to attend as she is a very inspiring speaker and has so many wonderful ideas that will make the world a far more interesting and learning place for our children.