My Project in Brief.What i believe.

Blog July 12th

It takes a village to raise a child , we all have heard this several times. But do we ever think what does it take to create a village ? In a village every grown up plays a valued role in education, health, welfare and development of a child.
As being in the field of Early Childhood Education for my part since the last few months I have been working on my project, based on the enrichment of children’s social and emotional development through outdoor play. After seeing children who are afraid of insects and animals, sitting on the grass, playing in the sand /mud, and getting dirty. I recognized the need to raise the awareness about the importance of these outdoor activities. Children have become more inclined towards playing computer games, video games , watching movies or engaging in sedentary activities rather than enjoying outdoors and observing nature. Due to various factors including both parents working , safety and security reasons, children spending maximum time in daycares, traffic, lack of parks and nature areas new constructions etc. Children have become alarmingly nature deficit. Next to a mother, Nature can be the best teacher. Children learn science, mathematics, social skills , develop emotional skills , learn to value life and even strt thinking about God and religion.
We can all agree that nature is incredibly therapeutic. Just like us adults, children do go through numerous stresses in their daily life. Keeping this in mind, I introduced my young students to outdoor activities. We started taking nature walks, rain or shine more often. We watched birds, looked for deer tracks, bugs,& worms, and touched snails in rain, played on tree stumps,looked for rabbits and squirrels.The Children enjoyed the outdoors and wanted to spend more time outdoors rather than indoors. They Forgot about movies and computer games. Inspired by their new interest in outdoor play, I designed the first portion of my pilot project to include children’s direct interaction with nature. What a better way to do this than planting a vegetable garden. We prepared the soil-bed and together, selected the vegetables we wanted to plant. As you can see children excitedly participated in this project. Every day they checked on the vegetable garden and together we watched the plants grow and bear vegetables. They loved picking chillies, bell pepper, and peas.
The second portion of my pilot project incorporated collaborative outdoor activities between adults and children. As we know it is impossible to raise a child in a village that does not involve the family of children. After the success of the gardening activity, I wanted adults to realize the numerous benefits associated with their children’s direct interaction with nature . To do this, I organized a potluck picnic in a nature park, inviting the children’s parents and grand parents. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed socializing with other parents and children as well as playing with their children while emersed in natural environment.. Children explored the park with the parents and were fascinated by the towering trees , ducks , the sound of the stream , and different animals. Both children and parents recalled the enjoyment they experienced outdoors in the nature park ,and also the joy being interacting with other parents and children. I felt as my efforts of bringing children and parents outdoors is accomplished when they all asked me to go for nature walks and picnics again.
Later I asked the children to express their experiences with nature through art. I was amazed to see the expressions I received in children’s art work. They told stories , draw pictures and also pretend played as animals. I believe through nature interaction children develop better problem solving, social, emotional and cognitive skills as they do in structured play areas and activities.. As Helle Nebelong ,Danish landscape architect mentions, “I am convinced that standardised play equipment is dangerous. When the distance between all the rungs on the climbing net or the ladder is exactly the same, the child has no need to concentrate on where he puts his feet. This lesson cannot be carried over into all the knobbly and asymmetrical forms with which one is confronted throughout life.” Nature Nurtures learning.
I got food for my thoughts from several wonderful articles and as well from the work of wonderful researchers who have worked hard for children’s benefit as well as from the teaching and guidance of my professors. I would like to mention few of the articles and books that helped me most in my project, “A Final report to the Forestry Commmision UK by Tim Gill about “Growing Adventure”, with whom I am in contact and plans to join him in his work for bringing children out in woods. As well as from Elizabeth Goodenough’s book , “A Place for Play”, And Richard Louv’s book ,Last Child in the Woods”.

Thankyou for reading my Project blog

I thank you all for reading my blog and leaving your comments on it. please keep reading and sending your thoughts about my project. Thankyou , to Shannan for being so helpful,supportive, considerate and patient with me . i learned this all from you as well, it helps me in becoming better teacher.

Bibliography

v Bingley, A.F., Milligan, C. (2004) Climbing trees and building dens: mental health and well-being in young adults and the long-term effects of childhood play experience End of project report.

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/ihr/publications/amandabingley/climbing_trees_and_building_dens.pdf

v Bailey, R., (2006) Physical Education and Sports in Schools: A Review of Benefits and OutComes. The Journal of School Health, Vol. 76, No. 8. P. 397-401 .

v Cheryl B , T., (winter 2008) The value of an Out-Door Education Experience. Vol.10, No.1 http://www.aacu.org/peerreview/pr-wi08/pr-wi08_RealityCheck.cfm

v ColeMan, K.J., Geller, K.,S., Rosenkranz, R R., Dzewaltowski, D A., (2008) Physical Activity and Healthy Eating in the After-School Environment. Journal of School Health , Vol.78, No.12

v Frumkin,H., and Louv, R. (2007) The powerful Link Between Conserving Land and Preserving Health. http://atfiles.org/files/pdf/FrumkinLouv.pdf

v Freema, M., & mathison , S.,(2009) Researching Children’s Experiences. The Guilford Press NY. New York.

v Gill,T., (march 2006) Growing Adventure : Final report to the ForestryCommissionUK

file://localhost/%CF%96%09http/::www.forestry.gov.uk:pdf:fce-growing-adventure-report.pdf:$FILE:fce-growing-adventure-report.pdf

v Gill, T., ( 2005) If You Go Down The Woods Today, The Ecologist 35 no. 8. Pgs_ 62-9

v Gostev, M., & Weiss, F.M. (2007). First hand nature: a classroom environment that encourages direct observation of nature helps develop young students’ scientific literacy. (Muscota New School). Science and Children. , p.48.retreived March 24 2009, from Genral One File via Gale: http//find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodld=IPS

v Goodenough, E,.A Place For Play (2008) national Institute for play.

v Long, S., Volk, D., Gregory, E., (2007) Intentionality and Expertise: learning from Observations of Children at Play in Multilingual, Multicultural Contexts. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, vol. 38, Issue 3,pp. 239-259.

v Louv, R., (2005) Last Child in the Woods Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, Workman publishing, NY , New York.

v Little, H., & Wyver, S. (June 2008). Outdoor play: does avoiding the risk reduce the benefits? (report) Australian Journal of Early Childhood. , Vol.33,2.p.33(8).Retrieved March 24, 2009, From general One File via Gale: http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodld=IPS http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/australian_journal_of_early_childhood/ajec_index_abstracts/outdoor_play_does_avoiding_the_risks_reduce_the_benefits.html

v O’ Brien,Liz (2009) Learning OutDoors: The Forest school approach, Education 3-13, Vol.37,No.1,p.45-60. This article was downloaded by:[ Wayne State university] on 27 May 2009, DOI:10.1080/03004270802291798 http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/03004270802291798

v Piper, P.,S., & Tag, S.,(2003) Father Nature : Fathers as guides to the natural World. University of Iowa Press.

v Rivkin, Mary S. (2000) Outdoor Experiences for Young Children. ERIC Digest. www.eric.ed.gov

v Russoniello,C V., Skalko, T K., McGhee,S A., Bingham-Alexander,D.,& Beatley, J. (summer 2002). Childhood posttraumatic stress disorder and efforts to cope after Hurricane Floyd. Behavioral Medicine. 28,2.p.61(11). Retrieved March 24 ,2009, from General One File via Gale: http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodld=IPS

v Spodek, B.,& Sarancho, O., N.,(2006) Hand Book of Research On The Education Of Young Children. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,Inc. New Jersey.

v Sigmund, E., Croix, M, De Ste.,Miklankova,L., Fromel,K.(april 2007) Physical activity patterns of Kindergarten children in comparison to teenagers and young adults. European Journal of Public Health, Vol. 17, No.6, p, 646-651 doi:10.1093/eurpub/ckm033 http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/17/6/646

Few Books i suggested to parents for children and adults.

Collaborative interaction with nature.

It was interesting and fullfilling to see parents and children enjoying the nature together, and as well as recalling their childhood times enjoying in woods. children were excited to be in nature park and explore nature.

Children are listening to the sound of rain water going into the main holes. Smelling wild flowers in the woods. looking at the caterpillars and watering plants in vegetable garden.

Review of my project in photographs.

i introduced more nature and outdoor activities in my day care. Taking children for nature walks and looking for bugs and observing small plants and insects. Going for rain walks feeling rain drops on our faces and jumping in puddles, picking up snails, watching them slither on wet path.Listening to rain sounds.Finding deer tracks, playing on tree stumps in woods.As Richard Louv mention a qoute of John Burroughs in his book ,The Last Child in Woods, " I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune once more". i agree with Richard louv that children need nature to develop mentally and physically healthy so they can learn and be creative. Children's early experiences with nature influences the child's long-term comfort and association and respect towards natural world. If a child learns to respect and love nature at early age, he will grow up as an adult who will respect environment.