TINY TREKS:

A PARENT’S PERSPECTIVE

Rob Barker

President,

Precor

Seattle’s climate is like the UK’s, so when my wife suggested sending our three-year-old daughter to an outdoor school (outdoors 100 per cent of the time, all year), I thought it was a bit harsh. However, in the last two years I’ve seen my daughter fall in love with being outdoors: she’s now just as comfortable playing outdoors as indoors.

She’s also learned a lot about nature, as her ‘classroom’ is a local forest which changes with the seasons. For example, salmon swim up the river next to their site in the autumn. 

The advent of the iPad and on-demand content means my kids’ favourite programmes are always available – it’s so easy not to move. But I believe that, to love health and fitness, you have to first love movement; enjoying the outdoors at an early age is one of the first steps to more movement-based play and learning.

The classroom is an exciting open forest

GLOBAL BEST PRACTICE

Natural Connections, UK

Children from 125 schools across the south-west of England are happier, healthier and more motivated to learn thanks to a new project commissioned by Natural England that has turned the outdoors into a classroom and helped schools transform ways of teaching.

The findings were released last month by the Natural Connections Demonstration project, a four-year initiative to help schoolchildren – particularly those from disadvantaged areas – experience the benefits of the natural environment by empowering teachers to use the outdoors to support learning. The project – funded by Natural England, Defra and Historic England and delivered by Plymouth University – is the largest of its kind in England and has already helped more than 40,000 primary and secondary school pupils get out of their classrooms and into the outdoors – whether for a maths lesson in a local park or drama out on the school field.

Ninety-two per cent of teachers surveyed said pupils were more engaged with learning when outdoors, and 85 per cent saw a positive impact on their behaviour.

The majority of children also thought they learned better and achieved more when learning outside: 92 per cent of pupils involved in the project said they enjoyed their lessons more when outdoors, with 90 per cent feeling happier and healthier as a result.

The project has also found that taking lessons outside can help motivate teachers, with 79 per cent reporting a positive impact on their teaching practice. Almost 70 per cent of teachers said outdoor learning had a positive impact on their job satisfaction and 72 per cent reported improved wellbeing.

Natural England is now working with partners to help share the findings from this project, to support and enhance the provision of outdoor learning in schools across England.

GLOBAL BEST PRACTICE

The Bamboo School, Bali

When Elora Hardy was a little girl growing up in Bali, her mother asked her to draw a picture of her dream home. She drew a fairy mushroom house. But rather than simply putting the drawing on the wall, her mother went a step further: she built it.

Twenty-five years later, that same creative boldness – the drive to turn seemingly fanciful ideas into reality – is central to Hardy’s own vision, as founder and creative director of Ibuku: a Bali-based company that designs and builds soaring, curving, beautiful, solid and sustainable structures almost exclusively from bamboo.

Her father and stepmother are inspired by the same agenda, and conceived the Green School: a campus comprised entirely of open-sided, sustainable bamboo buildings. The school has a similarly avant-garde curriculum designed to help children “to cultivate physical sensibilities that will enable them to adapt and be capable in the world… to develop spiritual awareness and emotional intuition, and to encourage them to be in awe of life’s possibilities”.

Ibuku – which translates roughly as ‘Mother Earth’ – has played its part. Over the past five years, the firm has built close to 70 permanent bamboo structures on Bali, including 15 new classrooms at Green School.

Elora Hardy’s Ibuku specialises in bamboo construction / PHOTO: Manuel Gomes da Costa

Open-sided, sustainable bamboo buildings make up the Green School campus in Bali, Indonesia / PHOTO: Manuel Gomes da Costa

Ibuku has built 15 of the school’s classrooms / PHOTO: Manuel Gomes da Costa

Ibuku has built 15 of the school’s classrooms / PHOTO: Manuel Gomes da Costa

Ibuku has built 15 of the school’s classrooms / PHOTO: Manuel Gomes da Costa

GLOBAL BEST PRACTICE

The Greene School, Florida, US

The Greene School is a new educational complex being built in Florida, US – named after the school’s founders, philanthropists Jeff and Mei Sze Greene.

Based on the concept of a learning garden – an organic space for discovery and growth – the project aims to provide students up to grade 4 with an environment in which they can seamlessly experience both technology and nature, inside the classroom as well as outside.

“Fostering a sense of community has become one of the most important goals in the design of new teaching spaces. The more we can share spaces, collaborate and exchange ideas with each other, the more creative we get”, says Carlo Ratti, a founding partner of Carlo Ratti Associati, the firm that designed the new school.

The school has been designed around two central shared spaces: the ‘piazza’ and the garden. In addition, all the classrooms open to the outside. There’s also a large green space next to the school building which includes organic gardens, and the school’s library is located in a cabin in the woods.

The Greene School in Florida will be built around two central spaces: the piazza and the organic garden

The Greene School in Florida will be built around two central spaces: the piazza and the organic garden

GLOBAL BEST PRACTICE

Long Crendon School
Aylesbury, UK

At Long Crendon school in Aylesbury, UK, an outdoor learning space for its year 1 to 6 students has become a way of life.

The whole ethos is that kids should be outdoors as much as possible, in all weather: students of all ages take part in supervised forest school activities in a wooded area alongside the playing field two days a week – for example, climbing trees and learning how to light fires and make charcoal.

Many of the outdoor activities have been designed so they link to curriculum subjects, thereby complementing classroom lessons. The school believes this plays a large role in its ongoing exam success – Long Crendon consistently scores highly on this front – as well as its students’ improved mental health.

GLOBAL BEST PRACTICE

Waldkindergarten, Germany

The idea of the forest kindergarten originated in Scandinavia, with the first being founded by a Danish woman, Ella Flatau, in the 1950s.

However, it’s in Germany that the concept has really taken hold. After a few unofficial schools opening through the 70s and 80s, the movement gathered strong momentum through the 1990s; the country now has well over 1,000 forest kindergarten. Austria and Switzerland have now also latched onto the idea.

The model is similar to that of Tiny Treks, with small groups of children – up to the age of six – spend half of each day outside getting close to nature… climbing, playing and getting muddy.

And the benefits? Research by the University of Heidelberg, Germany, assessed children in their first year of elementary school, comparing those who had attended forest kindergartens with those coming from standard kindergartens. In six categories – including cognitive tasks, social behaviour, creativity and physical ability – Waldkindergarten graduates significantly outperformed their peers.