Growing through outdoor play

Growing Through Outdoor Play is a 60-minute professional development webinar for Early Years educators exploring how outdoor environments can support children’s holistic learning, development and wellbeing through play.

Grounded in Aistear: the Early Childhood Curriculum Framework (2024) and explored through the Play for Growth Framework, the webinar encourages educators to see the outdoors as a rich learning environment rather than simply a space for physical activity or a break from indoor learning. Participants explore the opportunities outdoor play creates for movement, investigation, creativity, connection, nature, independence, agency and appropriate challenge.

The session combines curriculum understanding, reflection and practical examples to help educators recognise the possibilities within the outdoor space they already have and make more intentional choices based on the children’s interests, needs and play.

Growing Through Outdoor Play explores the role of the outdoor environment in supporting meaningful, holistic learning and development in Early Years practice. The session is grounded in Aistear 2024, including its strengthened emphasis on outdoor learning, meaningful time outdoors and children’s connection with dúlra (nature), while using the Play for Growth Framework as a practical lens for recognising children’s physical, emotional, social, cognitive, creative and personal growth through play.

The webinar begins by helping educators look more closely at the learning already taking place during everyday outdoor play. Through practical scenarios and reflection, participants explore how seemingly simple experiences such as transporting water, climbing, building, investigating natural materials or playing with loose parts can simultaneously support multiple areas of children’s development.

Participants then consider the central question, “What becomes possible for children when we take learning outdoors?” The webinar explores how outdoor environments can offer increased opportunities for movement and large-scale play, investigation and discovery, creativity and transformation, social connection and collaboration, engagement with nature, emergent learning, agency and independence. These experiences are connected with the four interconnected Aistear Themes of Wellbeing, Identity and Belonging, Communicating, and Exploring and Thinking.

A dedicated section explores risky and challenging play, including the distinction between manageable risk and hazard. Participants consider the developmental value of appropriate challenge and how experiences involving climbing, balancing, movement, uncertainty and testing physical capabilities can support confidence, resilience, judgement, decision-making and independence. The educator’s role in observing, assessing and supporting challenge without unnecessarily removing valuable learning opportunities is also explored.

Recognising that Early Years settings vary significantly in the outdoor spaces and resources available to them, the webinar does not promote one ideal outdoor environment. Instead, educators are supported to examine the possibilities within the space they already have, whether this is a large natural garden, a small yard, a hard-surface area or a space predominantly containing fixed equipment. Participants consider whether their environment provides opportunities for children to move, investigate, build, transport, transform, create, imagine, connect, experience appropriate challenge, encounter nature, find quieter spaces and exercise choice and agency.

The final part of the webinar moves from activities to possibilities. Rather than beginning with the question, “What outdoor activity can I set up?”, educators are encouraged to consider “What experience or opportunity do I want to make possible?” Practical examples demonstrate how simple and open-ended materials can create opportunities for investigation, problem-solving, creativity, movement, imaginative play, collaboration, regulation and connection with nature.

Observation and reflection are embedded throughout the session. Educators are encouraged to notice how children actually use their outdoor environment, recognise the learning and developmental needs being communicated through their play, and use these observations to make intentional and responsive decisions about the environment.

The webinar concludes by inviting participants to reflect on their own setting and identify one possibility they would like to create more of for the children in their care, supporting the transfer of learning from the webinar into everyday Early Years practice.