The Outdoors

‟As the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically, and this reduces the richness of human experience.”

Richard Louv

One of the major challenges we face as a society is finding ways to tackle serious environmental problems like global warming, widespread pollution, ozone layer depletion and waste disposal. We can only do this effectively by fostering in today's children the sensitive attitude and connection with nature that is required to commit oneself wholeheartedly to such an urgent task.

Nature provides children with an ideal setting in which to expand their creativity, resilience, and self-confidence. Moreover, it is through regular experiences in nature that children develop a lifelong attachment with the natural world. And this, as many studies show, is the basis for a caring and responsible attitude towards the environment.

Being in nature is physically and psychologically restorative, helps relieve children (and adults) from directed-attention fatigue and contributes to a receptive attitude to learning by stimulating all the senses and integrating informal play with formal learning.

Studies have revealed that using nature to teach the curriculum can boost marks in science, languages, social studies and math, and that children who are allowed to play outside every day in a nature-rich school playground have better motor coordination and more ability to concentrate, and are less at risk from anxiety and depression.

In line with Simon Nicholson's theory of Loose Parts, we believe that every child is creative and inventive, and that children's creativity needs primarily open-ended materials (and combinatory play with words, concepts and ideas) to flourish. In nature, children can find an almost never-ending supply of “loose parts” –water, trees, leaves, bushes, flowers, sand– which can be combined through imagination and creativity.

‟The biggest thing children today need is reconnection with nature.”

David Suzuki

At Kaleide, the gardens are an invitation to explore and learn about nature and environmentally sustainable practices such as organic gardening, recycling and reusing. Every week, the children are offered the chance to spend a day outdoors in a nearby forest (Mesa Mota). These are all invaluable opportunities to learn about local flora and fauna, biology and chemistry, geology, environmental pollution, energy, the physics of weather and the changing seasons, geography, the effect of gravity on the tides, ecology, biodiversity and the interdependence of all forms of life on the planet... and so many other related topics that acquire new meaning and widen children's perspectives when they can be experienced, observed and interacted with.