OUTDOOR PLAY WEEK!
Playgrounds are places where children’s play can take off and flourish. Particular emphasis should be placed on how playgrounds must encourage all forms of play. There is a critical need to develop a disposition for outdoor physical activities in our young children. Outdoor play should not become too academic and too teacher controlled. We allowed the students to direct their own play!
TASK students setting up their Fairy Garden!
Tending to the Fairy Garden and watching it grow!
Toddler 2 took their art center outdoors with them!
They used fly swatters as a tool to paint with!
Toddler 2 took measuring cups out during water play. The teachers challenged them to walk all the way to the fence without spilling. This was a great balancing activity for gross motor play.
Our Preschoolers and PreK classes were busy building and leaping like frogs on the playground!
There are two fundamental reasons why outdoor play is critical for young children in our early childhood programs and schools. First, many of the developmental tasks that children must achieve—exploring, risk-taking, fine and gross motor development and the absorption of vast amounts of basic knowledge—can be most effectively learned through outdoor play. Second, our culture is taking outdoor play away from young children through excessive TV and computer use, unsafe neighborhoods, busy and tired parents, educational accountability, elimination of school recess, and academic standards that push more and more developmentally inappropriate academics into our early childhood programs, thus taking time away from play.
If you would like to learn more about why we think outdoor play is so important, click here!
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