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Young children, the outdoors and nature
Young children, the outdoors and nature

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Session 8: Moving forwards and answering the big questions

Introduction

Do you remember back in Session 1 you began this course by thinking about your responses to certain questions about your own engagement with the outdoors and nature as a young child? As you arrive at the final session of this course, you are again going to think about questions. Young children are wonderful at asking questions aren’t they? Even before they are forming full sentences they will point and ask, ‘What’s that?’ before moving on to those really difficult questions that you just don’t know how to begin to answer.

A child thinking.
Figure 1 Thinking about the big questions

In this eighth and final session of the course, questions will be explored for you to ponder so that you can make decisions in the way you choose to move forward. You will also be invited to ask questions of your own. No doubt, you will be aware of the substantial amount of knowledge you have gained up to this point regarding babies and toddlers and their engagement with the outdoors and nature.

You may like to look back at the notes you have made in your Learning journal and reflect on all you have learned, thinking about the big ideas that really stand out for you. Hopefully though you still have questions and can see this as a positive; a questioning approach is a really helpful one to adopt in terms of moving forward. In this session, you may find some answers to those questions yet at the same time, you will be encouraged to think about even more questions that could, and perhaps should, be asked.

By the end of this session, you should be able to:

  • identify further questions that need to be asked concerning young children’s engagement with the outdoors and nature
  • describe ways that settings can review their practice
  • identify key sources of support for practitioners who wish to lead on this practice.

Before you begin, listen to this audio of Joanne Josephidou, the session author, introducing the session.

Download this audio clip.Audio player: yon_1_s8_audio.mp3
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