Risk & Adventure in Early Years Outdoor Play
Learning from Forest Schools
- Sara Knight - Teacher and Forest School Leader
This book will give you the confidence to offer the children in your setting adventurous and challenging outdoor activities, as well as ways to utilise natural resources to their best advantage. There is clear, practical advice on what you need to do, which is underpinned by the theory that supports the benefits of this approach. Examples from settings are included, to illustrate best practice and to show how things can be achieved.
Issues considered include:
- being outside in 'bad' weather
- the importance of risk-taking
- the benefits of rough and tumble play
- observing and assessing children in this mode
- how these experiences improve children's learning
- explaining activities to parents, colleagues and managers
- ensuring health and safety requirements are met
- the role of the adult in facilitating these experiences.
Suitable for all students and practitioners working with young children from Birth to 8 , this book will not only give you ideas for outdoor play but also help you understand exactly what you are doing, why it is educationally sound and developmentally important for children, and where it connects with the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) in England, the Foundation Phase (FP) in Wales and the Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland.
Sara Knight is an experienced early years educator and Senior Lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University. She is a trained Forest School practitioner and author of Forest Schools and Outdoor Learning in the Early Years.
I enjoyed this book and found it particularly useful to read alongside Forest schools.
Will be using in term 3 Forest School
Excellent
Loved the way that this book was broken down into the elements. Gives good practical advice and ideas and hopefully will enable practitioners to think outside of the box when considering outdoor play opportunities.
This book is great for any early years or Playwork course
Excellent use of photographs to illustrate points. Useable activities and points for practice. A useful book that can be dipped in and out of.
This book will be used on the essential list for the module 'supporting the early years curriculum' as it discusses outdoor play but also how children need the opportunity to take risks and be able manage their own risks as this is a continuous issue for practitioners in todays society.
The way in which this book approaches the risks associated with outddor play is positive. The chapter headings are linked to the areas in which children explore the outside environment. The resources at the back of the book are very useful.
This book lacks research to support.
Students find this text really accessible. We use it to support applying thinking to practice. We use Tim Gill's work to think about lack of risk and we contextualise these with Ulrick Beck's Risk Society to explore debates around risk in cultural contexts, personal considerations and outdoor environments.
A good book for use in reflective practice when considering outdoor learning .
