Our relationship with nature has emerged as one of the most valuable sources of resilience and pleasure for children during lock down. After being tied to the house for many hours a day, the daily outings or time in the garden were of huge importance to everyone’s wellbeing, more than ever over the last few months. It has also been proven that being outside is safer for children in terms of reducing the spread of Coronavirus and, now that the lock down has eased, this is still as important. 

 For children, nature offers consistency in that it can be seen and engaged with every day using all their senses, especially touch, in a way we're not able to with human others, beyond those in our household, at the moment. In nursery we have tried to make sure that the outdoor environments are used as much as possible and that local, safe trips and outings are encouraged during the nursery week. Each of the Snapdragons nurseries has made the most of the local fields and woodlands, allowing the children the outdoor space which they thrive in and the opportunity to run faster, jump higher and shout louder!

The benefits of nature are endless and if you have been following our social media you will have seen that each of the nurseries has been bringing natural resources back into the nursery for the children to explore and be imaginative with as well.  Not only are natural resources free and readily available, they encourage children to use all of their senses when exploring them. It is so important to teach children to respect our natural world and look after it.

Being outside and playing in nature is a perfect opportunity to talk to your child about what smalls steps we can take to look after the planet.  There are many ways in which we can use natural resources for learning opportunities and activities: one example is painting with natural items, like leaves, twigs, or grass heads, this is a great way for them to explore patterns and textures as each item will leave a different trail on the paper.

Some other activities you can do with children using nature are:

• Looking for symmetry in nature - a good example is a leaf. 

• Loose parts play, or creating pictures using different “loose parts” from nature e.g. leaves, bark, flowers, sand. Have a look at the work of artist Andy Goldsworthy for inspiration. 

• Make your own natural jewellery, nature crowns or bracelets can be made from cardboard and decorated with nature or by using twine or strips of lime wood or any dead branch. A great trick is to make a cardboard head band and stick double sided tape round it then add the things you find on a walk as you go. Or you could thread shells or wood with a hole drilled through the middle onto twine.  

• Potion or perfume making with water and petals.

• Bird feeders to hang in the garden, talk about looking after the creatures in nature. 

• Looking at feathers or leaves under the magnifying glass, what does your child notice? 

• Creating a natural dinosaur world, collect up your child's dinosaurs and use sand, pebbles, water and leaves to create a prehistoric dinosaur world that will spark their imaginations!