Do you have a professional or personal interest in learning opportunities for young children? Are you working with children or are you a parent or carer?
This free course, Young children, the outdoors and nature, looks at the importance of babies and toddlers having opportunities to engage with rich outdoor environments. By completing the activities, you will be introduced to the benefits of outdoor engagement for babies and toddlers as well as a variety of practices and provision which will help you develop your own environments for young children.
The development of this course has been supported by The Froebel Trust who have funded Dr Joanne Josephidou and Dr Nicola Kemp to carry out their research into babies’ and toddlers’ engagement with the outdoors.
This OpenLearn course was produced with the kind support of Dangoor Education, the educational arm of The Exilarch’s Foundation.
Once you are signed in, you can manage your digital badges online from My OpenLearn. In addition, you can download and print your OpenLearn statement of participation – which also displays your Open University badge.
The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our start-of-course survey. Once you complete the course we would also value your feedback and suggestions for future improvement, in our end-of-course survey. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.Earn this free Open University digital badge if you complete this course! The badge can be displayed, shared and downloaded as a marker of your achievement. The badge is awarded for completing the course and passing the quizzes.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
- understand how to develop outdoor opportunities for babies and toddlers
- consider how to develop outdoor opportunities in practice
- describe and discuss some of the key aspects of Friedrich Froebel's principles and how they inform ideas about outdoor play
- identify the barriers to babies and toddlers engaging with the outdoors and nature and consider how to overcome these barriers.
First Published: 17/07/2023
Updated: 17/07/2023