RESOURCES

A Few Benefits of Nature Education:

• Being in nature makes you happy

• Helps children to be calm, helps them to focus, and helps them build confidence in themselves

• Correlations between spending more time outside and academic achievement

• Promotes physical well-being; when outside, children develop their abilities to balance, climb, jump, slide, stretch, walk, and run, thereby fulfilling their natural urge to be physical. This also provides the opportunity to build and strengthen neural pathways.

• Unstructured free play leads to stronger executive functioning skills (cognitive control of behavior)

• Focuses on social interactions - playing together, communicating needs, solving problems, working together, developing and articulating feelings - all naturally arising out of unstructured outdoor play

• Builds intrinsic motivation by providing opportunities to actively and independently discover and act; many interests can be pursued, depending on the will and imagination of the children - a place to climb and discover, or a place to observe and reflect

• Opportunities to be powerful - not only to make their own decisions but to actually create and destroy, construct and deconstruct

• Opportunities for inquiry and observation

• Opportunities to directly experience and understand natural phenomena

• Promotes respect and understanding for the natural environment/living things

• Little impulse control theft: The children are able to do what they need to do; it is their choice to run and play and be loud or relax and reflect and spend time by themselves

• Promotes self-regulation

• Supports mental health