How should children’s services be responding to the climate and nature emergency? This session focusses on practical changes we can make and our contribution to collective action.

How gendered are children’s outdoor experiences and is this an area of practice you would like to understand more and influence?  This session is designed to help services and practitioners gain confidence working with some knotty gender issues!

Adopting a place-based approach to all aspects of provision can enhance and deepen the quality of children’s experience and learning.  This session provides tangible steps to help connect with the plants, animals and people, past and present, with whom you share your space.  

Through games and investigation outdoors, we show how playing and learning outdoors can embed a love of learning in numeracy and maths. Working in the real world we have the opportunity to play with concepts, challenge our understanding and apply skills in new contexts.

The natural world is all around us no matter where our setting might be. Learning how to look at our spaces and take notice of the living things that we share spaces with can lead to enquiry and to action. 

Small, natural materials (sticks, stones, leaves, shells and more) and scrap materials can help us explore creativity, encourage curiosity and develop collaboration skills. We suggest ways to create your own store of low cost, multi-purpose loose parts materials and how can be used to support learning and play outdoors. 

This session will help you and your team to reflect on existing practice to ensure rich play and learning experiences for all. Make the most of the strengths of your team and identify gaps and opportunities in both spaces and expertise.