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Early Childhood: Playing, Moving, and Creating in Nature
Caroline Guy
Play
Play is a fundamental need for children and must therefore occupy an important place in their lives. We should avoid filling their days with countless activities and tightly packed schedules; on the contrary, we need to leave plenty of time for play. Within a group, these moments can be entirely devoted to free play, or be “mixed” times, with some children playing freely while others engage in an activity proposed by an adult, or not.
It is wonderful when a certain harmony settles in: three children reading books, two playing knights, one painting, and two others helping an adult do the dishes. What is essential is that life can unfold, with harmony among the children, between children and adults, and between humans and Nature.
Play develops autonomy, imagination, creativity, self-confidence, encourages children’s voluntary impulses, and quite simply allows them to learn. When a child is faced with a certain emptiness, without adult stimulation, they come face to face with themselves. This is potentially the moment when their imagination, combined with their will forces, is set in motion. They then begin to create through play and to play through creation. The activities we otherwise propose to children nourish them, and they will reinvest part of these inputs into their play.
Movement
Another fundamental aspect of young children’s lives is their great need for movement. They must be able to move as often and as long as they wish. They are eager to discover the world, and in the first years of life this happens mainly through the senses, through direct experience, through the body.
A young child cannot truly grasp things they do not experience with their senses in their immediate environment. Adult words should accompany and give language to children’s sensory experiences, not replace them. The young child discovers and understands the world by experiencing it. This creates an “organic” experience, lived in the body. This understanding is not intellectual; it is a lived experience that becomes an integral part of the child, often without their conscious awareness. Direct, living sensory experiences are the fertile ground in which children can plant their roots and find a strong anchoring, allowing them to grow and flourish with confidence.
Imagination and Creativity
Simply observing children playing in nature shows how powerfully Nature frees both their imagination and their creativity. The presence of a natural play space and the absence of prefabricated games and toys are highly favorable to the development of these abilities. Children have an imaginative and poetic vision of the world that should never be stifled. Why not simply offer an environment that respects and stimulates the imagination?
Through it, children overflow with ideas and projects that they can bring to life. Nature holds an infinite number of possibilities: it allows children to conceive, invent, and create. Its mysteries inspire them. Children who play a lot with natural materials develop limitless creativity. In Nature, children create their own games, establish their own rules, and make their own toys and accessories, everything they need to create a world in their own image as adults.
Among adults, studies have shown that four days of immersion in nature combined with technological disconnection lead to a 50% improvement in creative performance. Problem-solving abilities also improved significantly.
Within the the Dream of Gaia Academy, we have created educational packs to support any adult who wishes to offer children simple, varied, rich, and natural sensory experiences that respect the child’s inner world and gently harmonize with it.
Included in our “forest kit”: plant harvesting and crafting, cooking, gardening, DIY projects, painting, collages, and more. There is something for everyone, in every season!
https://academy.lerevedegaia.org/bundles/kids-activities
Caroline Guy
Creator of a forest school
Author of “L’école dans les bois – une pédagogie pour les jeunes enfants” (in French)
Educational creator of “Little Forest Elves – nature activity packs” ,
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