I work at the natural running initiative that is it design assistance and
Research Unit at the college of design and state university and there we have
the privilege of being in touch with children very often document their
activities outdoors
I learned from them for example
what do you think is happening here well this is a toddler who is very tightly
collecting the petals of the passes in his bail
one by one with a kind of a rhythmic sequence
I think he's counting with the whole body at a certain moment he looks into
the pail takes the people and tries to put it back in the flour
well it didn't work but what an incredible experience for this child
everything was prepared for him he had the freedom to do it
he learned that the world is full of beautiful objects like the passes that
the objects are part and that some processes are not reversible
so why is this important because this happen in a child care center and you
know
most children with working parents that are younger than 5 is some type of child
care arrangement
every day there they spend most of their waking hours they receive most of their
meals and of course they learn they socialize
they exercise these are critical environments and the activities that
happen there are foundational for child development so i want to highlight today
this idea of the outdoor learning environment as we call them here in
there in North Carolina as health promotion interventions and this is not
a new idea
it's an old idea and you
we all know that this environment for young children for kindergarten is a
coined this term was coined by the German educator Frederick forever in
1840 as places where their children grow
I can grow in a natural way now I think it's time for us to create those gardens
because these children has been there an average of thirty five hours a week now
if you add up
this amount of time since the child is six weeks old
until they are five it amounts more or less the same amount of time that they
are going to spend in primary middle and secondary school altogether
so these are the environments they are in every day they could be good normal
better they can be improved
that was an incredible opportunity if all these children millions of children
12 million children's if they attend school and could enjoy this type of
environment so we believe that we have to create environments for human healthy
development of the fire biosphere for generations to come do you think this is
a grandiose mission for this boy
sink into the flour well we don't we all know that nature is good for us and
research of course confirms this is good for attention functioning for academic
performance for relaxation or is not that when we come very stressed out from
the office we go for a walk outdoors
so there are very interesting new findings
new research that confirms that illuminate the value of the outdoors for
instance environmental diversity has to do with our immune system children that
grow up in farms has less asthma and less allergies because they are in
contact with a variety of microorganisms from plants and animals and plant
diversity has to do with our skin microbiome
yes these College of microbes that you know cover our body nothing to be
worried about
it's a it's a question of variety and to keep their healthy balance of these
microbes in our bodies so imagine children that attend these two different
Jackie our centers very good ones one with no plans at all and the other one
with a variety of plants
so we can imagine that the skin microbiota microbiome is very different
in this group of children
we know that prolonged stay outdoors support
I health and there is an epidemic of shortsightedness in children in Asia and
that is called sort of shortsightedness is myopia
so in singapore there is already a national campaign with the slogan keep
my OPI way to go outdoors and play
and gardening garden is the hands-on garden of course
suppose the preference of children for fruit and vegetables and the consumption
so these findings are driving this movement of very good outdoor
environments intentionally designed outdoor environments for young children
and when these environments are created
children are drawn to them and now if you think that going outdoors can feel
the colder or hotter
gardening is back pain for children is much more than them
freezes these young boy has seen something on the grass and yes it is a
grasshopper and that the teacher is there and same
yes approach the grasshopper and he does that of course the girls over is faster
than him
I'm jobs on to the log and there is when he has some moment to appreciate the
grasshopper you imagine these perhaps the first time in his life that he's in
contact with a grasshopper
no fear just wonder or children that are a little bit older like this child I was
observing a group of children and I see that he's trying to reach very high in
these triangular structure for the vine like a teepee and I ask me so what are
you trying to do and he says I want to get the violent thing that was the
purple part of the vine and he had a plan
he had been mom piling up toys
and and that are shown here in the red and the white circle and some of them
with wheels and I'm observing and taking photographs and I'm thinking should I
stop these and help the boy and grab the violet thing and show or should I wait
and the teachers around them
we decided to wait for a moment and at a certain moment he jumps from that
unstable pile of toys and grabs the violet thing and he opens the violent
think in front of me
he looks at me and he says it is green inside and I'm like yes but he was I
could see he was surprising he was a bit upset because I think he was imagining
this was violent inside of course and so he looks again then throws away and goes
for the next adventure
and I think this was another great example of experiential learning
everything was there for him he had the hypothesis
he had a plan he tested the hypothesis
they had positive is negated straight away go for the next one
how many researchers would like to do these with a negative hypothesis many
and we see very interesting things stimulated things in a vegetable garden
this is a vegetable garden a chocolate Center here downtown Raleigh and
children are amazed that we even eat these vegetables that grow and the
ground and they are a little bit spoiled and dirty when they come and so this
teacher and this boy were telling us that they were harvesting their red blue
and white potatoes for the fourth of July salad of course or the admiration
of children when they pull the first carrot and they are so proud because
they have been caring for that current for a long time and then they take it
home and they teach the family and the siblings and they very fast learn that
they put they like comes from the garden like this boy that says so where are the
bacon seeds
well not all not all food comes from the garden
so these environments are living environments are very dynamic
environments they are foster cooperation working together a curiosity
they have something for children from different abilities cognitive and
physical and now you may be thinking well how do you how do you create this
environment is very difficult and perhaps very expensive and the jugular
providers are showing us that is not that's not the case
like well if they cart is broken you can create a very good race planter they
create very interesting
outdoor environments these teepees and this vine teepees that work for the
summer and the winter and when we solicit feedback from the providers
about the investments they make they are telling us in this case a hundred
eighteen centers that with less than 1 south and dollars they improved their
outdoors and some of them had a little bit more and so we could say that eighty
percent of these a hundred eighteen centers have done improvements in their
centers with less than three south and dollars
now this is the big news
these in this movement of improving outdoor learning environments for young
children is growing fast
the parents are learning and relearning to play outside with their children now
have fun in all seasons that teachers are learning how to teach outdoors how
to facilitate learning how to do science with cherry tomatoes
well the center is told the time-lapse camera to monitor the growth of the
cherry tomatoes 24 hours a chilly couldn't wait in the morning to come and
see what has happened the night before the some centers are supplementing their
meals with the produce from these gardens that are cared by the children
by the parents by the teachers and some of them are replacing the can foot like
this Center replace sixty percent of the canned foods with a producer of their
gardens and they have their salad every day you know harvest it like this girl
that is harvesting the lettuce for this their lunch
what is very encouraging is this multidisciplinary collaboration that are
happening between instructors from many many different fields that come together
to make to produce these environments highly high quality environment and
education and health systems are partnering to produce system change
so next time you see a group of young children
yes look at the children but please look around them and see what type of
environment sailing is that they enticing
are they reach are they worth exploring
and please do something quick to recover your sense of wonder the sense of wonder
of being in touch with nature and you can do something everybody can do
something about it
disseminate ideas be active creating these environments in centers in your
home in their apartment buildings in public housing in a shelter
re creating this sense of wonder for you and for the children and remember what
Rachel Carson said many children delight in the small and inconspicuous
because being in touch with nature
every day is not just a unique opportunity
it is a right as the convention on the child's of the right States is a right
to develop to the fullest for children to live peacefully to learn to protect
the environment and we say in the place where there are in every day
thank you
yeah