In our last Blog, we spoke about child development. The best recipe to ensure our kids get everything they need is a healthy balance of everything. This includes time outdoors.
There are so many benefits of outdoor play, from better health, more independence, developing better social skills and learning to work as a team.
Outdoor play engages all the senses, it encourages children (particularly young ones) to exercise their body and mind. It elevates mood, encourages exploration, creativity and cuts down sedentary time. Ultimately, being able to play outdoors helps kids grow into balanced, healthy and more resilient adults.
In the midst of a busy schedule of school, homework, after school activities and screen time, it is super important for kids to get time to play outside. Throughout this article, we want to share with you Adventure camp's top benefits kids can reap from playing outdoors.
Facilitates ongoing learning: By now, you all know how much we love the outdoors! and we believe outdoor play is a brilliant way to enhance a child's ability to learn. The outdoor environment provides a different learning space and playing in groups, like they do at Adventure Camp, can help kids to learn essential life lessons and skills that can't be attained through classroom learning alone. Things like; their ability to problem solve and ways to acquire new info quite regularly. Children begin to realise that learning is more of a continuous process, rather than just something they need to do in a classroom. Learning is Fun!
Promotes a love of Nature & develops curiosity: Nature is wonderful and curious, it is also vital to every living thing. So educating kids on just how precious our environment is, is actually super important. Playing outside, puts you in close contact with this wonderous environment we live in and the more time you spend in nature, the more you are going to love it. Kids get so curious, they see new things, experience different smells and sensations, next their imagination begins to fire. Facilitating love and respect for nature at a young age is crucial to helping our environment last. You can even take your kids on nature trips and teach them about the local wildlife. Even the smallest things can amaze children and we love to see how the open space and lack of constraints can spark a child's imagination. From playing in the sand, to building a nature shelter, outdoor time can help to build a curious mind.
Improves attention span and overall health: Outdoor play is considered recreation and unlike in the classroom, spending time in nature actually helps to improve a child's concentration (particularly in those affected with attention deficit disorders). Kids tend to put more effort into things like winning at sport than they want do with their homework. Participating in sport actually requires a lot of concentration to focus on what your are doing. Playing outdoors has even shown to improve performance at school. Outdoor games are an excellent source of exercise and while kids engage in outdoor play, not only does their physical activity increase, so does their energy and stamina. This in turn, will also boost their mood, strengthen their bones and improve their muscle strength.
Kids develop new perspectives: Children who spend a lot of time indoors, don't really care that much about what is happening outside their own 4 walls. They become too comfortable and they know that they are safe. There is a whole wide world out there and seeing things from different perspectives is a pretty crucial skill to have once we get older. When you venture outdoors, there is so much to see and experience. While playing outside kids are able to observe, develop opinions on things, face any problems that come up and find different solutions to handle them.
Makes kids happy: this is one of the greatest things about outdoor play, it is so great for boosting a child's mood and they seem so much happier when they have had time outside. Getting a healthy dose of Vitamin D in the warm sunshine is the most natural and effective mood enhancer you can get. In addition, playing outside effectively allows kids to release any build up energy or frustration in a positive way.
Our last and most favourite benefit of playing outdoors is, It Get's Kids Away from Screens!
These are just a few of our top reasons to spend more time outdoors, try getting your kids outside this weekend. Once you do, you will discover so many more ways your kids will benefit from being outdoors. If you are stuck for ideas, check out our blog page, we have some super simple and fun ideas for you.