Sue Gyford: Children need to discover that it's great outdoors

Published on Thursday 1 October 2009 10:00

ONCE upon time, when the phrase "childhood obesity" was but a twinkle in the eye of the nearest paediatrician, kids loved the great outdoors.

It's easy, now, to look back with nostalgia to a time when children stretched for their pedals before their PlayStations and preferred the gang hut to Pizza Hut.

But, amid growing concerns about a generation being "wrapped in cotton wool", a new drive is being launched to reclaim those days.

Children's Minister Adam Ingram is leading efforts to encourage nurseries to embrace the benefits of playing outside.

Every private and public nursery in Scotland is to receive a DVD explaining the benefits it can bring for both physical and mental health.

The initiative – part of the Curriculum for Excellence – builds on the work of Edinburgh-based agency Children in Scotland, which in 2007 called for a major rethink on the way Scottish children are educated. Following an investigation into Norwegian education, it published the report Northern Lights, which urged Scots to embrace outdoor education.

Despite the country's severe weather, Norwegian nursery children are often bundled up warmly and taken out to play – and even to eat and sleep – in the snow. By contrast Scottish children have been cosseted and the pay-off has not been good, according to Children in Scotland's head of programme and practice, Karen Mountney.

As well as affecting their health, she said keeping children indoors left them unable to cope with the risks inherent in enjoying the great outdoors later in life. "There is a tendency to wrap children in cotton wool and think that we should protect them from risk, whereas what we should be doing is looking at the way that children experience risk so that they understand it. If we keep them away from risk they can't learn how to assess it. By helping them to do that they will be safer for the rest of their lives," she said.

It might seem like a challenge for an inner-city nursery, but that's not so, according to Ms Mountney: "It's not something that you need to have a forest on your doorstep to be able to do, it's really an attitude towards being able to take kids outdoors. A playground area can be used in lots of different ways, even if it's small."

There are social benefits to outdoor play as well as physical ones, she adds: "It hits on every part of a child's development. If children are outdoors they're also getting a strong awareness of interpersonal skills, co-operation, they're starting to see more consequences of their actions."

Parents hunting for a nursery which has a good outdoor track record can look at its OFSTED report, ask staff for examples of recent trips, or look around for tell-tale signs like a good supply of outdoor toys.

One nursery which already endeavours to get its children outdoors regularly is Seabeach in Portobello. Nursery practitioner Carol Oliver said the staff and children made regular visits to several local parks and to the beach: "The beach is like a giant sand pit for them. Yesterday we did circle time games outside – like traditional games – but we also went for a walk to the Daisy Park to collect things for the nature table."

She says the children enjoyed the independence of outdoor play: "The kids love it. They're really deciding their own learning. We're there to guide them, but we're there really just to introduce the language."

Encouraging children to get outdoors might seem like an uncontroversial policy, but some are concerned about enshrining it in a curriculum.

Marguerite Hunter Blair is chief executive of Play Scotland, based in Roslin. The organisation lobbies for youngsters to be given more time for play, and Ms Hunter Blair is concerned that outdoor time could be hijacked for structured learning, rather than giving tots the freedom to create their own fun.

She says: "Organised outdoor play is very good and fulfils a purpose, but in many ways it's the same as a sports activity. In some schools there are compulsory parachute games for 45 minutes to combat obesity, and it's promoted as play. It's not play, it's an anti-obesity activity. When we talk about play we talk about children freely choosing to play and freely choosing their own activity."

She called for additional training to go with the new push for outdoor activities: "In a childcare setting some of the staff may not have had lots of playwork training. They may have done lots of early years education, things that are very structured and focused on child development. I think there's a strong argument that with government support for these endeavours, we need more playwork training."

She also fears that, by including outdoor play on the curriculum, it could became a miserable experience for children who don't enjoy the outdoors: "Some children don't always want to go outside, so I'm slightly nervous about any compulsory element. I went on the Northern Lights tour to Norway and I was very impressed. But I was amazed, they took the wee kids out on sledges and they had their lunch outside and they fell asleep outside on the sledges. That's fine if kids want to do that, but if it's a case of 'this is what we're doing today', that worries us.

"That's not what it's about, it's not about forcing them to be outside.

"We do really suffer from bad weather and the right clothing doesn't always make us feel better."