The McMillan Sisters and Early Childhood Education

The practitioner in an early years setting supporting children’s play learning and development is extremely important, as play helps stimulate the child’s brain, supports their needs on an educational level, as well as helping them with social difficulties such as building relationships, developing them and helping them gain confidence. Many people believe that a child learns best when they are motivated, such as Fredrich Froebel. He believed that children benefitted from all types of play. The McMillan sisters believed that outdoor play was extra important as they studied children who played and slept outside and discovered that they were the happier and healthier children in comparison to those who only played inside.

The theme of this reflective account is engaging children in participation, and enabling children to have a voice. The Every child matters documentation (Department for Education 2010) focuses on the important role of the adult in enabling children to make decisions and encouraging them to participate and make a positive contribution. As a result through this account, how children in my setting are encouraged to participate in the outdoor play space will be explored. A small piece of research was carried out which will be reflected on, as will theory relating to children making a positive contribution in the early years.

In the book Early Childhood Education Today 11th Edition, we read that “Family-centered practice is one of the cornerstone features of early childhood special education. This follows the fundamental notion that children’s development is influenced by their environment: their family, teachers, school, town, media, governmental systems, and so on.” (MORRISON, 2009) The first thing we as teachers must do is acknowledge that the children’s families are the first and most important teachers of their children and recognize the long-term effect families have on the attitudes and accomplishments of their children . For the edification of today’s youth there are potential positive responses to be obtained through working with a child’s parents as

Having fun and engaging objects outdoors can also encourage the children to talk, ‘go find the wellington boots’ for example.

Education for early childhood has changed drastically over the last past couple of centuries. With new laws and new programs, education for younger kids was changing for the best. Though change didn’t happen on its own it took some great people to stand up and take a stand in what they believe in. Once one person stood up, others followed over the course of time. One of the many activists for the rights of children is Marian Wright Edelman.

Unstructured outdoor play was standard for me as a hyperactive child growing up in the rural Midwest. I fondly recall digging forts, climbing trees and catching frogs without concern for kidnappers or West Nile virus. According to newspaper columnist and child advocate Richard Louv, such carefree days are gone for America’s youth. Boys and girls now live a "denatured childhood," Louv writes in Last Child in the Woods. He cites multiple causes for why children spend less time outdoors and why they have less access to nature: our growing addiction to electronic media, the relinquishment of green spaces to development, parents’ exaggerated fears of natural and human predators, and the threat of lawsuits and vandalism that has prompted community

With a low child to instructor ratio, Banning and Learning Outside’s crew of 11 instructors, comprised of dedicated educators, artists, naturalists and wilderness specialists, bring to life a year-round, exclusively outdoor classroom. Situated on the Irvin Nature Preserve and Farm, a private 269-acre stretch of land owned and managed by the Triangle Land Conservancy (TLC), the property’s diverse ecosystem teems with inexhaustible opportunities for learning. With a creek, pastures, ponds, forests, and wetlands, the property is ideally suited for discovery and exploration.

Outdoor School - Why? What is the value of having students learn in a natural setting?

Finding ways to keep students interested in schoolwork and increasing their cognitive abilities has been a constant struggle for teachers. It is common knowledge that when a child’s interest wanes, it becomes harder for them to learn and retain knowledge on the subject. One tool that can be used to combat this issue would be the use of an outdoor classroom or learning outdoors. During the late 60’s and 70’s outdoor education was highly recommended in curriculum guidelines to enrich educational experiences, but later declined in the 80’s (Eaton, 1998). Today, outdoor education only plays a small role in children’s education experiences, despite the benefits it could provide. Teachers should take advantage of outdoor education to increase children’s cognitive skills, provide physical and emotional benefits, and decrease the bio phobia many children seemed to have developed.

A meta-analysis of data collected in Australia by James Neill PhD, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Canberra and professor Garry E Richards of the University of Western Sydney concluded that Outdoor Education does positively affect the lives of those who partake in it. As stated in their 1998 edition to the Australian Journal of Outdoor

“The study suggested that free play in nature is far more effective than mandatory adult-organized activities in nature. Paradoxically, this suggests that organizers of nature activities should

only a few examples, it is obvious that the leash on children has tightened, with parents and educators to preferring to keep children indoors to avoid the potential repercussions. But with proper preparation and educating parents and caregivers on ways to make outdoor play safe for the children in their care, there is no reason why children should not be allowed to follow their natural inclination to run and climb and jump. In an article, Play in Natural Outdoor Environments: A Natural Choice, it is suggested that parents and caregivers “should have a plan for what activities the children will engage in while they are outdoors and before the children go outside. Caregivers should discuss what activities the children will be doing so that

“Environment can be very powerful,” (Keffer, 2015). I have always been curious to find out how changing a student’s learning environment helps them with their ability to learn. In this particular case I was interested to see how changing a child’s regular classroom environment to one that engages in an outdoor classroom environment affects the student. Throughout this paper I will use a wide range of key points to address this specific research question: What benefits can students gain by engaging in an outdoor classroom environment? I will discuss the effects on students while exploring nature, engaging in outdoor classroom environments, types of curriculum in outdoor classrooms and what it looks like, student outcomes from outdoor classrooms (such as attitudes, assessments, engagement in school), and a few more key ideas that support this question.

Early childhood education is pivotal for children development (Berk, 2013). In order to meet the students need, early childhood centers offer alternative education environment. Some of early childhood centers fully adapt technology and offer all the benefits of technology, others provide nature-based approach to students in their backyard or like forest kindergartens they offer schooling inside of a forest. The forest kindergarten movement started in the 1960s in Scandinavia and then spread through Norway, Sweden, Denmark, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, United States and many Asian countries as well. In the forest kindergartens, children learn and play by interacting with natural environment and led their learning (Sobel, 2016). Even though nature based education appears to be a new alternative, educational scholars such as Frobel, Montessori, Dewey, and Rousseau all addressed the importance of children’s experience in the nature and its role young children’s development and wellbeing (Elliott, 2010; Wilson 2012; as cited in Ernst, 2014). Once you think about how much children are soak in to technology and over protected by parents, you will realize that as teacher of forest kindergarten program; forest kindergarten programs are not only re-connecting children with nature, but also offers numerous opportunities to play new games (Braithwaite, 2014).

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand (Confucius – Chinese philosopher 551 BC – 479 BC). This quote, although it is old, still resonates in the way we learn today. To further understand, we have to understand what affective learning is. Affective domain of learning is area of learning concerned with feelings or emotions associated with learning. It is the acquisition of behaviours involved in expressing feelings in attitudes, motivation, values, appreciation and enthusiasm. (Krathwohl, Bloom, Masia, 1973). Affective learning involves: