We offer a range of CDP courses to develop your organisations' skills and knowledge in outdoor play and learning, including:

Taking Small steps into Learning and Play Outdoors

Find out how to make the outdoors part of your everyday routine. This session will provide tried and tested ideas for short activities outdoors which you can use to build your confidence in playing and learning outdoors while creating a community of learners both outdoors and indoors. You will be provided with activities you can use tomorrow, and you will be shown how to build on your successes. These building blocks will help embed the benefits of outdoor play and learning across your programme.

 Small Loose Parts 

When we think of ‘Loose Parts’ we often think of large objects such as planks, tyres and crates. In this session, we will use small, natural materials (sticks, stones, leaves, shells and more) and small, re purposed scrap materials. We will discover how these loose parts can help us explore creativity, encourage curiosity and develop collaboration skills. In this session, learn how to create your own small store of low cost or no cost multi-purpose loose parts materials for use in any outdoor space.

 Exploring the Built Environment

Learning outdoors is an essential part of developing a sense of place. Human constructed outdoor spaces are often places we pass through without realising their significance or their impact on us as communities and as individuals. Through creating a pedagogy of place, we will find tools to explore, describe and better understand our constructed spaces and how they work.  This session provides suggestions for exploring our unique spaces, whatever context (art, stories, heritage, maths, mapping…) we choose to work within. 

 Let’s Go for a Walk

We all know that going for a walk outdoors is an important part of keeping us active. Using the University of Edinburgh’s ‘Outdoor Journeys’ methodology, we will show how going for a walk can also be a springboard for rich learning experiences.  Walking in your immediate neighbourhood, or even walking around your own grounds, while making a conscious decision to reflect on what we see, hear and feel stimulates enquiry across your programme. Even the youngest children should be involved in planning and in leading the learning and be enabled to follow their curiosities. A place based pedagogical approach enables us to learn about a space and learn more about our children and young people so that we can design meaningful and impactful learning experiences for all.

 Active and Playful Numeracy and Maths Outdoors

Numeracy and maths provide us with a toolkit for exploring and describing the real world. To embed a love of learning in numeracy and maths we should provide chances to play with concepts, challenge our understanding and apply skills in new contexts.  Through games and exploration outdoors, we can show how playing and learning outdoors can encourage that love of numeracy and maths. We will show examples you can try out in your own setting immediately and will signpost further resources and learning suggestions to ensure that the fun continues!

 Finding Nature in a Concrete Jungle

It’s unlikely that any of us has access to an idyllic natural setting but all of us do have nature of some sort around us - if we know how to look. Learning how to look at our spaces (find tracks, signs and traces of the living things we share spaces with) can lead to enquiry and to action.  We will show you ways to support the nature you find and ways to introduce more nature into your concrete jungle.  You will leave the session more confident in your ability to build your own bank of knowledge about the natural environment and you will know where to find resources you will need to lead your community of curious learners acquiring the knowledge and resilience to make a difference.  We can all help nature make spaces healthier for all living things – including ourselves.

Introducing place-based pedagogy to working with children and families

Are you looking to embed place-based pedagogy across the services you provide for children?  Children, families and practitioners are finding that adopting a place-based approach to all aspects of provision can enhance and deepen the quality of their experience and learning.  Rooting activities and the design and management of spaces and resources, and embedding them intimately in the local environment and community, can transform services.  Would you like your services to be more connected with the plants, animals and people, past and present, who also inhabit your space?  Thrive Outdoors has expertise in supporting a comprehensive place-based pedagogical approach to service provision and witnessing how this helps people care for each other, their immediate environment and the wider planet.

Developing a place-based pedagogical approach

This Professional Learning programme will support your setting or service to engage with  curiosity and connection to the place where you work with children and families. Rooting activities and the design and management of spaces and resources, and embedding them intimately in the local environment and community, can transform how people experience a service. But what does this look like on the ground? We provide tangible steps to help practitioners connect with the plants, animals and people, past and present, with whom they share their space. Thrive Outdoors has expertise in supporting practitioners and services to adopt a place-based pedagogical approach and witnessing how this helps people care for each other, their immediate environment and the wider planet.

This course helps practitioners ‘walk the talk’ of Learning for Sustainability and embed their service within the local environment, culture and heritage.

We can deliver these sessions in a variety of ways from full day inservice to a series of shorter two-hour blocks over a number of weeks, including a bespoke walking workshop at your service.