ABC does….outdoor continuous provision

I’ve been talking quite recently about outdoor play and the forest school approach. I thought I’d augment these articles with a selection of outdoor play ideas. However before I do that I’m going to highlight a little passage about outdoor continuous provision taken from the ‘ABC Does’ blog. If you’re not familiar with ABC Does it’s written by Alistair Bryce Clegg, (an experienced early years consultant and former head teacher of an Infant School and Early Years Unit) and it’s a treasure trove of creative and inspirational ideas for early years settings. You may already be familiar with his work as he’s a written a number of books and even a couple of articles specifically for our blog. Anyway, according to Alistair…

“When you are thinking about your outdoor provision, first look to your assessment and see which areas of skill development are a priority for your children. Next look at your outdoor space and see if those areas are explicitly represented and also consider where there might be opportunities to enhance other areas with more discreet resources to consolidate or expand the skill you are focusing on.

Then ask yourself the big question…

What makes this activity outdoor play and not just indoor play taken outside?

If you take your Duplo out onto a mat on a sunny day, that is not outdoor play. It is playing with indoor resources outside. If you have a water tray outdoors that is filled with the same equipment that you would have indoors then that is not outdoor water play it is indoor water taken outside….I am not saying that you shouldn’t do that…What I am saying is that you can’t really call this ‘outdoor play’ in the sense of developing the skills that are unique to the outdoor environment…There are of course lots of indoor enhancements that you can make to your outdoor provision like books, mark making material etc. But, you are placing them in your outdoor provision to capitalise on children’s interest and engagement in the outdoors. This engagement and interest will help with the job of developing basic skills like reading and writing…

So, to sum up BRIEFLY…

– Start with assessment to identify need

– Reflect the need identified in the provision you offer

– Link ‘bridging skills’ to indoor provision

– Be clear and explicit about why you have put indoor provision outside (like your water tray)

– Be clear and explicit about how you are planning for the development of outdoor skills

– Enhance your explicit outdoor provision with indoor provision (eg mark making, reading, numeracy) for added engagement and basic skill development.

Take the time to work with your team to really ensure that everyone has an understanding of skill development in children and how effective use of the indoor outdoor environment can have a significant impact on their attainment.”

To read more visit the ABC does blog.

Ok so now that I’ve shared that sage advice with you it’s on to the next blog post. I’m going to be researching lots of ideas for outdoor play activities and providing links to some resources and equipment that I feel could be of value in outdoor settings…I’ve got a feeling this could take a while. In fact I know it’s going to take a while because I’ve actually already written it and it took all of Easter Monday (apart from a couple of hours spent watching Tottenham v Norwich and an episode of Mad Men – for my thoughts on either please get in touch). I wrote this blog post afterwards but I’ve decided to pretend that I wrote it first because I think it works better as a precursor to the next article.