Creating Outdoor Learning Environments
- Type
- Course
- Date of Publication
- November 17, 2023
- Price
- See Agrilife Learn
Overview
Course Information
A well-designed, naturalized outdoor learning environment can be the ultimate tool for facilitating meaningful, impactful outdoor play and learning experiences for young children.
The purpose of this 2-hour course is to introduce early childhood educators and directors to best practices in outdoor learning environments and offer tips for making incremental improvements to enhance the quality of your program's existing outdoor spaces.
Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Define the importance of creating high-quality outdoor learning environments;
- Describe best practices in designing high-quality outdoor learning environments; and
- Make incremental improvements to your program's outdoor spaces.
The development of this online course was 100% funded by federal Child Care and Development Funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as part of an $8,000,000 grant from the Texas Workforce Commission.
Looking for solutions in your county? Contact your local extension experts
More choices in Childcare Training
- Course
Outdoor and nature play provides an opportunity to teach young children about nature conservation and environmental stewardship.
The purpose of this 2-hour course is to highlight strategies early childhood educators can use to model and teach environmental awareness and conservation principles. - Course
To facilitate positive social and emotional outcomes for children, early childhood educators need to understand and recognize the role of stress and trauma on early brain development and implement proactive and responsive measures to build children’s resilience.
This 2-hour course aims to help early childhood professionals understand how they can play a part in cultivating positive social emotional outcomes for each child by applying trauma-informed and resiliency-supporting practices in early learning settings. - Course
Children do not develop in a vacuum, so their social emotional development and mental health outcomes depend in part on the protective factors available in the settings and systems where they live, learn, and grow.
The purpose of this 2-hour course is to highlight the roles of families and communities in supporting young children’s mental health and provide early childhood educators a variety of strategies to maximize the positive influence those systems can have on a child’s social emotional development. - Course
Despite the known benefits of outdoor and nature play for young children, early childhood educators and administrators may worry about issues of safety and liability.
The purpose of this 2-hour course is to equip early childhood professionals to view risk in outdoor and nature play as a process of balancing risks and benefits, rather than a barrier to including outdoor and nature play in your program. - Course
Planning effective outdoor and nature play experiences to support young children’s learning requires an intentional approach.
The purpose of this 2-hour course is to help early childhood educators and directors translate the intentional teaching practices they likely already use in other areas to create outdoor and nature play activity plans tailored to the individual needs of the children in each group within the program. - Course
Early childhood educators can make the most of planned outdoor and nature play experiences in terms of children’s learning through the interactions they have with children as they play.
The purpose of this 2-hour course is to offer early childhood professionals actionable strategies for facilitating learning through outdoor and nature play.