Outdoor (Visual) LibrarySINCE OUR CHILDREN are developing nervous systems, we need to consider how the development of the nervous system has depended for millions of years on being outdoors. A developing nervous system desires to experience all the sensations that exist in the natural world of the whooshing wind, singing birds, and fragrant pines. It is crucial that some of the activities we engage our children in be conducted outdoors. No other stage or playground offers the nervous system such a dynamic array of input, sensory and cognitive.
The activities designed for this chapter need to be performed outdoors because the learning experience would be very difficult to duplicate indoors. With that said, I suggest moving any of the previously detailed games and activities in this book outside if you can. Since being outside enhances a child’s sensory awareness, it increases the learning experience of most of the previous activities. There are ways in which the body, driven by the nervous system, processes information outdoors that cannot be replicated in an indoor environment, especially when it pertains to visual, auditory, and vestibular processing skills. Simple activities like throwing a ball become more dynamic simply from being outside, because of the varying types of visual information such as changes in depth dimension. Many other activities are more challenging to the nervous system when we are outdoors. For example, the simple act of walking requires increased motor planning because of the varying terrain of the outdoors.
Some experiences cannot be replicated indoors. For example, when a child hears the rustling of branches, his auditory system attends to the information and localizes and discriminates what the sound is instantaneously. His vestibular system working with his musculoskeletal system allows him to crane his neck, altering his head in a spatial plane while maintaining his balance. The small muscles of his eyes, which are controlled by his vestibular system, coordinate his eyes so they work together to locate the source of the rustling leaves and focus as a small bird emerges from a cacophony of chirping and squawking.
Note: Visual activities abound in this book, but the outdoors is by far the richest environment to “work out” the eyes. More and more children struggle with visual skills that impact their success in the classroom as well as on the playground. Younger children are spending more and more time in front of a pixilated screen. A 2003 Kaiser Family Foundation study reported that 68 percent of children under the age of two spend more than two hours per day in front of a media screen. It is imperative for our children’s development that we balance the sedentary visually taxing input received from media screens with movement-based, visually stimulating, auditory-rich outdoor activities.
Outdoor (Visual) Library
Outdoor
Camera
Photo paper
Take pictures of animals, birds, trees, rocks, and so on. Be sure to take pictures of items separately.
Print out the pictures, and spread them out.
You (the adult) determine a scene, and the child groups together the objects that belong to that scene (e.g., lake, duck, boat).
Alternatively, have the child group the pictures together by a category such as animals, trees and flowers, things that fly, and any category that you have enough pictures to make a group.
As the child advances (and the library becomes large enough), have the child build collages based on a theme or scenario.
Develop the library over time, and pull it out regularly.
Categorization: By using visual cues, this activity helps your child’s brain to categorize past sensory experiences.
Reading comprehension: This activity prompts your child to categorize and access information in the brain in a fashion similar to when the child listens to a story or reads a book.
Memory: By prompting your child to link associated information together, the activity helps your child understand the gestalt of the experience.
Ocular-motor skills: This activity exercises the muscles of the eyes by encouraging a range of visual movements, including wide motility, scanning, eye pursuits, and eye saccades.
WHY One of the reported brain-processing differences of children with neurological difficulties, especially autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Asperger’s, is difficulty understanding the gestalt of a situation versus the details. This game helps your child understand the larger context, the gestalt, of a situation.
Inside Out Outdoor only
8½-inch-by-11-inch paper and pen
Draw a line down the middle of the paper, creating two columns. Label one column “Indoor” and the other column “Outdoor.”
In the “Indoor” column, name common indoor items and their touch properties: for example, the blanket—soft, leather couch—smooth, drink in refrigerator—cold, water from faucet—wet, needle—prickly.
Now go outdoors and find matching tactile properties: for example, lake—wet, rose thorn—prickly, dog—soft.
In the “Outdoor” column, write the outdoor item and sensation that corresponds to a similar indoor item and sensation.
Try to do things like this whenever you go on vacation.
Note: I can tell when parents have played this game with their child during a trip. When I see them after the trip, my simple question, “Was the trip to Tahoe fun?” is not met with a quick yes or no, but with information about what they saw and felt.
Tactile skills: Linking common tactile properties to outdoor objects helps the child generalize the already learned sensory information. Also, this links visual and touch information together.
Visual skills: This activity encourages a wide range of ocular motor skills due to being outside.
Language: Showing your child how a descriptive definition of an object or experience used in daily life applies to the properties of objects outside the confines of the house expands the child’s understanding of descriptive words.
Reading comprehension: Having an expansive understanding of words and how they apply to many things increases your child’s understanding of words in context.
WHY Although children can understand what a word means by reading or hearing about it, evidence shows that experiences increase a child’s understanding of words, which has a later impact on reading comprehension as well as on writing.
Walks ’n’ Talks Outdoor
None—maybe some hiking boots
Place to hike
Camera (second level)
Small notebook and writing instrument (second level)
There are innumerable ways to make a hike interesting, especially as a means to elicit communication.
Walk behind, in front of, or next to each other and talk about the prepositions: for example, “I am next to you.” This is the best way—concrete and three-dimensional—for your child to understand these concepts.
Pick up sticks along the way, and analyze the stick collection: for example, “Which one is longer (shorter, heavier, lighter, sharper, or smoother)?” For more advanced children, this can take the form of a question-and-answer game: for example, “Who has the longest stick?”
Alternate fast-slow walking, and describe the rate of walking and any changes such as stopping, turning, or taking big or small steps.
Use counting steps as a means to teach direction, and follow by saying things like, “two steps forward, four steps back.” For children who have difficulty with directions—specifically children who have receptive language or motor planning difficulties—you may have to motor them through it. Hold the child’s hand while you walk her through the directions.
Play the “look up and down” game. Ask, “What do you see?” For example, use the carrier phrase, “I see a something …” to start a conversation.
To make the hike into a game, choose an object and see how many you can count. For example, ask, “How many pine trees do you see?”
Play “follow the leader” as you walk around the neighborhood.
Count the cars in the driveways. Choose and find a house or car of a certain color.
Conduct the walk in the woods whenever possible. The sensory experiences and opportunity for expanded language opportunities are nearly infinite.
To enhance recollection of various aspects of the experience, bring a camera and create a storybook of the hike. Every experiential story should include many pictures of your child with various backgrounds and objects, and the story should be in sequential order. Keep it short—no more than ten picture pages—and use simple words: for example, page one says, “On Friday, my mom and I went for a hike by the lake,” and page two begins, “The first thing we saw …”
Praxis (motor planning): Although walking requires very little praxis and is done quite naturally, hiking in an unfamiliar environment or over a new terrain requires the brain and body to work together to navigate the novel environment.
Proprioceptive input: Having your child hike up a hill provides a significant amount of proprioceptive input, as compared to walking on a level terrain that is familiar to your child’s brain and body.
Communication/language: Having your child learn to comment on her environment is a great conversation starter and is essential for the development of social language.
Language concepts: This activity sets the stage for teaching expanded language, specifically questions about what is being observed and answers to questions.
Visual-spatial skills: This activity promotes visual-spatial understanding of the environment by attending to similarities and differences in the properties of the things your child sees every day. It also links words with the observations.
Visual skills: Again, being outside is the greatest “gym” for the eyes!
WHY One of the best ways to begin a conversation with another person, especially someone who is not familiar to us, is to comment on the common surroundings or ask a question about the surroundings, such as “The sky is so clear today,” or “Do you know if it will rain today?” Since so many children struggle with pragmatic language, it is important to provide activities that can be linked to expanded language and let them learn these skills in context.
Near ’n’ Far Outdoor
Four sticks: two flat sticks of wood of the same length used for mixing paint, a stick that is approximately 6 inches longer, one flat stick 9 to 12 inches longer
Red paint
Paint the two flat sticks bright red on both sides. While painting the sticks, discuss how they are both the same size. Measure them so the child is convinced they are the same.
Place the first stick in the ground. Then walk about 100 feet away, and place the second stick in the ground.
Go back to the original stick and back up approximately 10 feet so that both sticks are in view.
Point out that the stick that’s farther away looks smaller even though it is not.
Take the longer stick and place it at the farther away spot. Have your child go back to the original vantage point, place the longer stick in the ground, and run back to you.
Point out to your child that the “near” stick (the shorter one) and the “faraway” stick (the longer one) look like they are the same size.
Next place the sticks next to objects in different environments, such as on hikes or walking in the neighborhood, to get a sense of the perception of size of near and faraway objects.
Visual-perceptual skills: This activity promotes an understanding of how distance impacts the perception of size.
Visual skills: Looking far and then near promotes visual scanning and eye motility, while focusing on the faraway stick encourages steady fixation.
Convergence and divergence: For the eyes to take in the “near” stick, they must converge (move together) and then diverge (move apart from each other) to look in the distance.
WHY Activities that promote looking near and far at objects require depth perception, which relies on information from monocular vision (obtained through one eye) as well as binocular vision (both eyes working together—eye teaming). Incidentally, the eye muscles required for reading and that control convergence of the eyes (prerequisite binocular vision) are the opposing eye muscles that control for divergence (think biceps versus triceps), which allows the eyes to take in a pixilated screen or look in the distance (TV or computer). Thus, providing children with outdoor activities is even more crucial in a media-filled world.
Outdoor Entryway Outdoor
Favorite toy characters such as Thomas the Tank Engine, or SpongeBob
Choose one of the characters, and explain that the character likes to be outdoors. For example, Thomas is always outdoors pulling cargo, SpongeBob goes to the beach, or Dora and Diego spend their entire time in the jungle.
Prompt the child to go outdoors by saying that the character needs to go out because that is what makes the character happy and learn.
Go for a walk and have the child name one thing that the character sees, smells, or hears. Once the child understands the different senses and can name one thing, then increase it to two, and so on. The idea is to use the character as a conduit for getting your child to attend to the sensory world around him or her.
Outdoors: For those children who are not motivated to explore the outdoors, this is an entryway into outdoor play.
Sensory awareness: Using a character that your child relates to will serendipitously let him explore the outside environment. I have seen a child spend hours driving “Snow Thomas” around in the snow because Thomas loves being outside! This same child would not go outside and “play” in the snow before Snow Thomas was introduced into the scenario.
Language: The opportunities for vocabulary expansions, spatial concepts, comparisons, and asking simple cause-and-effect, “What if … ?”–type questions are abundant outdoors: for example, “What happens if the sun goes behind the clouds?”
WHY Motivation is the key for expanding a child’s world, and sometimes the greatest motivator is already in the child’s hand!
My Secret Outdoor Path Outdoor
Chalk or yellow rope (at least 10 feet of rope)
Box with treat(s) or prize, chosen by the child
Shoes (including an adult’s shoes, sneakers, dress shoes)
Electrical tape
Together with the child, you (the adult) help her construct a path, be it chalk or rope. If the child is capable of doing it herself, then let her draw the chalk line or lay the rope to make the path.
Put the prize at the end of the path.
Have the child walk on the chalk line as if on a tightrope—first in everyday shoes, then in less commonly used shoes, and then in an adult’s shoes. Increase the difficulty by having the child wear different shoes (i.e., nonmatching) on each foot.
Increase the difficulty further by zigzagging the line.
Using the yellow rope, lay it throughout the backyard (on the ground): around a tree, over rocks, or over mounds (use strong tape, such as electrical tape, to secure the rope).
Have the child attempt to walk the “tightrope.”
Ideation phase of praxis: This activity reinforces all stages of praxis, including ideation (first stage of praxis) since the child aids in setting up the path.
Motor planning phase of praxis: The child has to plan how her body is going to stay on the path when going around the tree or over the rocks.
Execution phase of praxis: To complete the praxis stages, the child must execute the idea and plan by motorically following the path all the way to the chosen prize.
Visual tracking: The child needs to visually follow the path while walking in order to stay on it.
WHY Most activities for children with difficulties are set up by an adult, and children are not part of the ideation or planning phases of the game. This activity allows the child to mentally and physically be involved throughout the entire activity.
Adventure Bag Outdoor
Blunt-end tweezers
Closed-end chopsticks, obtainable at many Asian restaurants as an option for children
Large kitchen tongs
Bag (Call it the adventure bag.)
Paper and pen
Young children: Use the tweezers, chopsticks, tongs, and bag. Have the child walk around filling the bag by using the appropriate tool based on the size of the item he chooses to place in the bag.
Older children: If your child is at writing level, have him make a list of what he will search for and put in his bag. Then have your child search for the items outside and fill his bag with the listed items using the tool of choice.
This would be a great activity to do with one friend. Working as a team, they can search for all the items on the list. One child should be responsible for holding the grabbing tools and list, while the other child holds the adventure bag.
Note: You may have to guide your child’s list selection. Also, if your child struggles with writing, write the items for him as he dictates them. Or if he can, let him use the computer to generate the list, since the idea is to generate the ideas and have an outside purpose.
Project planning: This activity is designed to help children plan what they will search for, create a list, and then execute the plan.
Writing: It motivates children to write, because the words have a purpose. This is very important for children who struggle with writing.
Social interaction: This activity is a good “one friend”–type activity, which may be less stressful for your child than an indoor game or free time.
