Nature-Based Play in the Garden
Submitted by Dax Law, Lethbridge Public Library
After spending so many hours indoors, it is exciting to say that warm weather is finally here. For many families that means getting back out in the garden. What better place to find low-cost, high-impact play opportunities than your own backyard?
The garden is a great play opportunity for all ages, especially young children. With soil, sand, water, and mud, there is a range of textures to experience. Sand and soil are readily available in the garden, providing a wealth of building materials right beneath our feet. This play builds kinesthetic skills like balancing, lifting, purposeful movement, and motor planning. Adding water to the mix means a whole new world of creativity and problem-solving as children can explore the effects of surface tension, viscosity, and gravity. Getting messy with hands-on play, digging holes or making mud pies, lets kids test their surroundings in a safe, supervised setting.
Interacting with plants in a natural environment provides new sensory experiences essential for lifelong learning. Spaces filled with a variety of plants encourage young children to explore with all their senses. Hearing grasses and seed pods rustle, smelling different flowers, recognizing colours, and tasting fruits and vegetables. The seasons provide more variety, as plants grow and leaves change, offering a new set of sights, sounds, and ways to interact with nature.
The benefits of playing in the garden aren’t limited to the immediate tactile experience and motor skill development. There is the opportunity for cognitive development through cause-and-effect observation. Children can see first-hand how their actions, planting seeds and tending to them, can be fruitful (literally). Since young children learn well by repetition, encouraging recurring garden play times is key. Planting fast-growing plants like lettuce and peas means results can be seen within days or even hours.
So get out in the garden, the whole family can lend a hand! As you and your children experience nature through messy, unstructured play you won’t just be growing tomatoes, you’ll be growing the early skills they can use every day.
Young boy with a garden shovel digging in dirt
Craig, D., Trina, N. A., Monsur, M., Haque, U. T., Farrow, G., Hasan, M. Z., Tasnim, F., & Akinbobola, M. S. (2024, September 20). Effective nature-based outdoor play and learning environments for below-3 children: A literature-based summary. International journal of environmental research and public health. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11432191/
Fjørtoft, Ingunn (2001). The natural environment as a playground for children: The impact of outdoor play activities in pre-primary school children. Early Child. Educ. J. Vol. 29. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1479-5868-11-59
Luthor, Christopher (2022, May 8). A young boy using a red tool to stir a substance in a container. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/a-young-boy-using-a-red-tool-to-stir-a-substance-in-a-container-ug5HTDhoH2s