Toddler Outdoor Nature Play | Nature Exploration & Learning | Forest School

So we've come to the forest this morning just for a nice kind of walk and explore. It's quite a wet day which I actually like when I'm in the forest because it makes it a bit more magical. Does that make sense? Because there's kind of water on the leaves and all the logs are kind of a bit soggy and it's a bit of a darker day so it always feels a bit more kind of cosy and magical in the forest. But yeah I just thought I'd do a video. I've been asked by a few people about kind of outdoor exploration and kind of nature play and just more kind of outdoor stuff. So I just want to show you kind of what we do like on a normal day. You know if we want to get out in nature and just kind of explore. And like kind of the learning opportunities really from just being outside and kind of in a child-led way. So I don't kind of do any structure to our outdoor play. Just kind of let them explore and then just kind of extend on It's very tiny that one isn't it? Is it moving? This got a big duck. There's a squirrel just over there in the distance. You can see his fluffy tail. He's on the tree. Can you see him? I would like to stroke him too. The squirrels are very fast and a bit shy. So I don't think he's going to let us stroke him today. But there he is. He's letting us have a look at him. Can you see? Yeah they're very good at climbing. No. Well they can climb very fast because they've got long claws and they climb all the way to the top of the trees. So this forest is really close to a train track. So there's quite a lot of kind of noisy train sounds as the trains go past. So we're just going to have a walk up to the fence so they can have a look at it. Hopefully we'll be able to see one. Listen guys can you hear the birds? Let's see if we can be really really quiet and listen. Can you hear the birds? Can you hear that Nino? They're singing to us aren't they? Are you shuffling to the end? It's a bit of a pointy bit there isn't there? Look at this log it's quite flat that one. Are you going to crawl on it are you? Jump! Okay. Okay. Three, four, five, six, Where is she? There she is! It's like a little plant boy isn't it? My turn okay. You found me! That's it over here. Can you see any more? This one we can put over here. And what about this one? That's kind of a crooked stick isn't it? She's just over there. So these go find it cards I often just pop in the bag and we'll take out with us. It's quite a good activity for kind of sensorial type of development. There's loads of different cards in here with lots of different language on, different textures. So I'll give you a couple of examples. So find something hard, find something soft. It's really hard to do it with one hand. Find something smelly and something yuck. But yeah they're all different and there's loads of different ones. This is cool find something tiny that fits into this little circle. So yeah these are great for kind of connecting children with nature because they have to go into the environment around them and kind of find something to match the card. Also it's really good for introducing new language you know like the word hard, soft, smooth, bumpy, all those kind of things. Straight, curvy, there's so many so much different language in these. So yeah these are really great and I always take these in my bag with me. I'll link these below for you. Does it fit inside that tiny circle? Okay. So Mia you've got to find something green. What can you see that's green? We're going on a bear hunt, are we? I hope there's no bears in here. So we just got back from the forest. It's been a really nice time. Usually when I'm out kind of in the forest or in nature we usually kind of give ourselves a good kind of two hours to explore. I don't tend to go with any kind of agenda really or any kind of structure. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I'll plan maybe like you know our snacks or I'll plan that we're going to sit and have chocolate or something and I'll take like a rug or whatever. Sometimes you know like I'll bring those kind of find it cards or I'll bring like a couple of bags so we can do some nature finds and bring those home. But generally I just kind of let them explore and kind of take it at their pace. It's all about kind of being calm and not rushed. Just letting them explore kind of at their own pace and toddlers kind of have a slow pace. But yeah just kind of like take my time and just enjoy the stillness, the calmness and show an interest in whatever they're interested in and try and like kind of sneak in some learning opportunities really where I can. So you know if they're asking about a particular tree we'll kind of try and find the name of it. We'll explore like the colour, texture, shape of the leaves, that kind of thing. So we often will find nature items and bring them home and we use them in our play. So I always have a kind of nature basket around. Hey I always have a nature basket which kind of looks a bit like this. So we'll have like pine cones that we found and we'll use these to make prints like in play-doh or do painting. We found this really cool like fossilized shell which we're going to explore. I'll find out a bit more about that. This is some really cool bark that came from a redwood tree and so it's really light and it feels quite unusual. So we'll kind of explore that and learn about different textures and then just pieces of different wood and bark and all sorts of things really and acorns if we can get them and different leaves that we can kind of use for printing. There's lots of ways to kind of bring nature into play in quite a kind of natural and lovely way and build on creativity and just kind of explore that kind of open-ended type play where it's all about the child and kind of what they want to learn and kind of taking the play where they want it to go. Yeah so for us it's just about taking our time enjoying that slow pace and just letting the children explore whatever they're interested in and I'm there as kind of a guide and to kind of help them spend their learning and kind of encourage that connection to nature. So yeah I hope you've enjoyed it and any questions let me know, don't forget to comment and if you're new to my channel please subscribe and welcome and I look forward to offering more videos in the future and yeah thanks so much for watching again. Bye mummy. Don't say bye.