Journal ArticleDOI
Nature and its Influence on Children’s Outdoor Play
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TLDR
The authors found that natural environments support children's imaginative play, the development of positive relationships and allow for the environment to become a place of learning, and concluded that in order to make effective use of the outdoors, early childhood centres need to provide children with access to the natural environment and teachers who support children in developing a relationship with nature.Abstract:
A growing body of literature indicates that humans need contact with nature for their wellbeing, however at the same time young children are becoming increasingly separated from the natural world as their access to the outdoors diminishes. The importance of school and prior-to-school settings in Connecting children with nature has been acknowledged. This study sought to find out how opportunities to engage with nature would influence children’s play and social behaviours. Two early childhood centres with contrasting outdoor environments were selected for the study, and twelve focus participants were observed over a twelve-week period in concert with interviews and field notes. The findings suggest that natural environments support children’s imaginative play, the development of positive relationships and allows for the environment to become a place of learning. The authors conclude that in order to make effective use of the outdoors, early childhood centres need to provide children with access to the natural environment and teachers who support children in developing a relationship with nature.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Position Statement on Active Outdoor Play
Mark S. Tremblay,Casey E Gray,Shawna Babcock,Joel D. Barnes,Christa Costas Bradstreet,Dawn Carr,Guylaine Chabot,Louise Choquette,David Chorney,Cam Collyer,Susan Herrington,Katherine Janson,Ian Janssen,Richard Larouche,William Pickett,Marlene Power,Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter,Brenda Simon,Mariana Brussoni +18 more
TL;DR: The full Position Statement provides context for the statement, evidence supporting it, and a series of recommendations to increase active outdoor play opportunities to promote healthy child development.
Journal ArticleDOI
Outdoor Time, Screen Time, and Connection to Nature: Troubling Trends Among Rural Youth?:
Lincoln R. Larson,Rachel Szczytko,Edmond P. Bowers,Lauren E. Stephens,Kathryn T. Stevenson,Myron F. Floyd +5 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors report that contemporary children are spending less time outdoors than their predecessors and highlight the rise of electronic media use in the lives of youth, which is a concern.
Journal ArticleDOI
Nature-Based Interventions for Improving Health and Wellbeing : The Purpose, the People and the Outcomes
Danielle F. Shanahan,Thomas Astell Burt,Elizabeth Barber,Eric Brymer,Daniel T. C. Cox,Julie Dean,Michael H. Depledge,Richard A. Fuller,Terry Hartig,Katherine N. Irvine,Andrew Jones,Heidy Kikillus,Rebecca Lovell,Richard Mitchell,Jari Niemelä,Mark J. Nieuwenhuijsen,Jules Pretty,Mardie Townsend,Yolanda van Heezik,Sara L. Warber,Kevin J. Gaston +20 more
TL;DR: There is a call for research to identify the drivers influencing the effectiveness of NBIs in enhancing health and wellbeing and the range of factors that will inevitably influence the extent to which these interventions succeed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Exploring Early Childhood Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices About Preschool Outdoor Play: A Qualitative Study
Sandra McClintic,Karen Petty +1 more
TL;DR: The authors explored how early childhood teachers' beliefs and practices influence the function of preschool outdoor play and found that teachers believed that supervision was paramount and that the physical design of the outdoor environment posed limitations for planning, preparation, and implementation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Cross sectional associations of screen time and outdoor play with social skills in preschool children
TL;DR: Findings indicate that television/DVD/video viewing may be adversely, and outdoor play favourably, associated with preschool children’s social skills.
References
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Book
The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective
Rachel Kaplan,Stephen Kaplan +1 more
TL;DR: A study of the natural environment, people, and the relationship between them is presented in this paper, where the authors offer a research-based analysis of the vital psychological role that nature plays.
Book
The biophilia hypothesis
TL;DR: The biophilia hypothesis, if substantiated, provides a powerful argument for the conservation of biological diversity and implies serious consequences for the authors' well-being as society becomes further estranged from the natural world.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Convention on the Rights of the Child
TL;DR: The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, bringing to a close ten years of debate and discussion over the merits of the project as well as the content of its main provisions as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Coping with add The Surprising Connection to Green Play Settings
TL;DR: Attention Restoration Theory suggests that contact with nature supports attentional functioning, and a number of studies have found contact with everyday nature to be related to attention in adults as discussed by the authors, but this is not the case in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Natural Environment as a Playground for Children: The Impact of Outdoor Play Activities in Pre-Primary School Children
TL;DR: Bjerke et al. as mentioned in this paper found that children are becoming more sedentary during their adolescence, and they spend more time on TV, video, and electronic mediachildren, and we know even less about what effects the movement pattern of children has on learning in children.