Transforming Your Outdoor Early Learning Environment

Transforming Your Outdoor Early Learning Environment invites center and home-based educators to reimagine and reconstruct their image of conventional children’s play yards as they know them and to create beautiful outdoor learning spaces on a limited budget with natural elements and loose parts that offer children opportunity for irresistible engaging explorations. Ideas, inspiration, and benefits for changing outdoor environments are provided along with the basics for designing, transforming, and maintaining 11 specific outdoor play zones.

Transforming Your Outdoor Early Learning Environment offers an approach that:

• Requires minimal financial resources
• Features loose parts and upcycled materials
• Integrates nature
• Includes inspiring photos of before and after transformations
• Offers design tips and material lists
• Describes how play in each area fosters children’s competencies, development, and learning in the areas of social and emotional, language and communication, cognitive, physical, and expressive arts