For young children, play is their most important way of learning. Outdoor play, in particular, offers a rich variety of benefits for children’s physical and cognitive development. Whether it’s climbing, running, jumping, or simply exploring nature, outdoor play supports the development of essential skills that serve as a foundation for young learners’ holistic growth. Understanding these benefits can help parents, teachers, and educators foster supportive outdoor learning experiences for children.

Physical Development: Strengthening Bodies and Honing Skills

Outdoor play is crucial for developing strength, coordination, and flexibility in young bodies. When children engage in locomotor movement, such as running, jumping, and rolling, they engage the large muscle groups of the core, arms, and legs, which are important for strength and coordination. This helps children move with ease and confidence and supports them as they move onto trickier skills, such as bike riding or playing sport. A strong body and stable core are also important for less clearly ‘active’ tasks, such as mark-making (sitting at a desk to draw or write requires postural control), or building with blocks (lifting and moving heavy or unwieldy objects requires strength and balance).

Children may engage in play that involves climbing, swinging, and even hanging upside down, on monkey bars or a climbing frame. Such activities stimulate the vestibular system (relating to the inner ear), which is responsible for balance. When children swing, hang, balance, turn, and move high and low, their nervous system receives proprioceptive input, which helps them understand how their bodies move in space. The vestibular and proprioceptive systems help children understand their bodies, supporting awareness of what they need. For example, when it’s time to sleep, the brain interprets vestibular input to understand that the body is lying down and that it is time to rest. Bodily awareness impacts every aspect of a child’s physical and sensory development, including movement, focus and attention, spatial awareness, self-regulation, and more. These skills may appear intuitive; by the time we reach adulthood, we are likely unaware of these processes at all. But looks can be deceiving – these skills are complex to master – and mastery requires practice!

Outdoor play also offers opportunities to develop fine-motor skills. When children search through piles of pebbles for the most beautiful one, use a stick to draw in the dirt, dig and fill holes, or pour a watering can over the garden, they are building dexterity and control, as well as hand-eye coordination. When children climb trees or hang from monkey bars, they build hand strength and shoulder stability. These skills will come in handy when children hold a pencil, turn the pages of a book, or tie their shoelaces.

Cognitive Development: Boosting Brain Power through Exploration

In addition to physical benefits, outdoor play contributes to children’s cognitive development. When children explore their surroundings, they engage with nature and concepts of sustainability, observe wildlife, and interact with the sensory world – textures, sounds, and colours. The opportunity for hands-on learning supports curiosity and problem-solving as children wonder, explore, question, and learn.

Outdoor experiences may promote creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. The unstructured nature of outdoor play offers children time and space to experiment and take safe risks, as well as think critically and imaginatively about play. While engaging in indoor play, children may use blocks, fabric, and furniture to create a fort; translating this same idea into the outside space, where these pre-made resources may not be available requires flexible thinking and imagination! These opportunities to be creative and flexible foster cognitive growth in young children.

The vestibular system – so important to children’s physical and sensory development – also supports cognitive development.  Vestibular development supports spatial memory, which helps us navigate our surroundings and recall locations. Anyone who has ever helped their child look for their misplaced shoes at pick-up time, only to be told they can’t remember where they took them off knows how important this skill is! Likewise, one of the first things children will learn when they transition to ‘big school’ is the location of the classroom, toilet block, and lunch area. A good spatial memory, supported by a functional vestibular system will help them feel calm as they navigate a new environment.

The learning opportunities that emerge from engaging in the sensory world of the outdoors are countless. When children hear the sounds of nature and can differentiate between, say, the calls of a kookaburra and a magpie, they are learning to tell the difference between sounds – crucial for later literacy learning. When children care for the garden, they learn cause and effect as plants grow or die based on their actions. When they experience the changes in seasons, they learn about the passing of time, and the mathematical concept of measurement. These are just a few examples of the rich learning environment offered by the outdoors.

Conclusion

Outdoor play is a powerful tool for supporting children’s physical and cognitive development. To outside observers, outdoor play may appear to be less important or offer less “learning” than more structured and tangibly productive indoor experiences. This may feel especially true for families preparing for the transition to Prep. However, this could not be further from the truth! All aspects of outdoor play support the physical and cognitive skills children need to grow and learn. Encouraging children to spend time outdoors fosters growth in their minds and bodies, setting them up for a lifetime of creative thinking, connection with nature, and physical mastery. Outdoor play is more than just fun – it’s essential!