We’ve learned how important active free play is to developing minds and bodies—especially when it takes place outdoors. Now we are going to dive a little deeper into what specifically makes the outdoors therapeutic.
You may be thinking, My kids get a ton of free play and are moving about all the time! Why does it have to take place outdoors? What is so special about nature that humans can’t try to replicate this experience? How is rolling down grassy hills any different than rolling down a ramp at a gymnasium? Isn’t getting messy with shaving cream in the bathtub just as good as getting messy with mud outside? I will answer these questions in this chapter.
Virtually everything that can be done indoors can also be done outdoors—and not just traditional play activities and games. With some creativity and a little forethought, even ordinary tasks such as eating and bathing can actually happen outside for a fun, enriching, and memorable experience. So grab the picnic supplies and that industrial-size bucket!
Let’s consider the girl who grabs her magic wand from her toy box and twirls around her room, turning her books and dolls into frogs and princesses. She imagines a bad witch coming through her window, so she considers building a fort out of bed sheets and pillows. But she’s worried she’ll get in trouble for messing up her room, so she changes her mind and decides to play “dress up.” She wants to be a ballerina, but all she can find is her fairy dress, which won’t do as a substitute. She decides to do something else.
But that same child outdoors plays quite differently. She finds a rough, crooked stick that instantly becomes a magic wand. A large hill becomes a place to escape an unwelcome dragon, and she races up it. But the wind in her face becomes a massive storm, so she rolls down the hill, where leaves form an imaginary pool of lava that she must carefully traverse by hopping from rock to rock.
Indoors, there are rules to follow. And objects have a specific purpose. Even toys that are meant to inspire creative play can be seen as having a single functional role, leaving kids feeling limited by the very items that are supposed to bring hours of play. The outdoors, however, has fewer rules and guidelines. And objects in nature, because they don’t seem to have any inherent function or usefulness, actually inspire kids to use their imaginations, challenge their thinking, and test their physical limits—far more so than almost anything made in a factory. True joy, a sense of play, and confidence overcome children who play outdoors.
When I advocate for children playing outdoors, I remind parents of three key factors that I’ve never seen successfully duplicated in any indoor environment:
Now let’s look at these factors in more detail.
Imagine your child walking barefoot through a meadow while scanning for beautiful flowers. While walking, he tilts his head to hear the birds and feels a light breeze on his skin. Walking barefoot provides great sensory feedback to the arches of his feet, giving him a good sense of where his feet are in relation to the rest of his body. Listening to the birds chirp helps him orient himself compared to the other creatures in the wild. The light breeze keeps him alert, while the warmth of the sun comforts him. This is the optimal state for sensory integration to occur—when we are aware of our surroundings, but relaxed and calm.
On the other hand, man-made environments, such as movie theaters, colorful play spaces, and indoor party arenas, can overpower the senses and send a child into the fight-or-flight response—an unhealthy state to keep our children in. This time imagine your child is walking into a place where the music is blaring, lights are flashing, and bright colors flood the room. The room is crowded and he keeps bumping into other people. He starts to sweat and gets slightly overwhelmed. Maybe he reacts by covering his ears, talking a little more loudly, or even asks to leave the place, insisting that you never bring him back here again. It is hard to achieve good sensory integration when surrounded by noise and chaos.
On the other hand, nature stimuli tend to be more gentle, subtle, preventative, and, in some cases, even restorative. In fact, nature offers the ultimate sensory experience, and we are born as sensory beings. We learn about ourselves and the world around us through our senses, and the more we refine our senses, the better we are at doing…just about everything. Spending some time every day outdoors—from simply walking barefoot on the grass to listening to birds in the trees—offers many sensory benefits:
Remember the little girl with the magic wand we talked about earlier in this chapter? Well, let’s say she decides to go ahead and build that fort she was afraid to make indoors. Only now she is outdoors. She wants to create a hiding spot away from the fire-breathing dragon. Instead of using blankets and pillows, she uses the surrounding natural environment as her inspiration. She starts by grabbing large sticks and leaning them against a partially fallen tree toward the back of her yard. She notices there are a ton of ferns in the marshy area that borders the woods and starts gathering these, carefully layering them on top of the sticks. She quickly grabs some pinecones and acorns for “food” and crawls into her fort to rest and “eat” away from danger.
The outdoors offers limitless potential to young children. It becomes a place where they can go to relax their mind, to be inspired, and to dive deep into a world of imagination. It’s a place where they can design, create, and explore. The possibilities are endless. Time and time again, studies show that when children have free play outdoors, they become better problem solvers and their creativity is enhanced (Hamilton 2014).
Sergio Pellis, a researcher at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, says the “experience of play changes the connections of the neurons at the front end of your brain. And without play experiences, those neurons aren’t changed” (Hamilton 2014). It’s specifically through so-called free play—the kind that requires no coaches, no umpires, and no rulebooks—that lasting changes are made in the frontal brain, which plays a critical role in regulating emotions, making plans, and solving problems. Whether free play is wrestling with your friend or creating an elaborate sand castle together, children have to negotiate and determine their own rules. (See chapter three for a deeper discussion of the benefits of free play.)
Within an indoor environment there are certain expectations and preconceived notions or ideas already created for children. Indoor toys have a designated purpose and, therefore, impose limitations on play. For instance, a puzzle is designed to fit together in a certain fashion. A board game comes with predetermined rules on how to play. A toy car stays a toy car, although the terrain the child creates may vary. However, a pinecone can become something else entirely. I’ve seen it become treasure, a key, currency, a building material, a decoration, and more. I’ve seen sticks used as fishing poles and play weapons and as parts of a fort, a boat, a horse, an obstacle course, a trap, and even an airplane.
Daily exposure to the outdoors stimulates the brain in many ways:
Imagine a child you know (maybe even your own) in gymnastics class on a balance beam. She walks across it with bare feet. It is consistently smooth, warm, and unbelievably level. She knows its length and feel. There are no surprises. Now imagine her outside, walking barefoot across a log that crosses over a shallow marsh. She walks across the anything-but-level balance beam for a couple of feet just fine. The soft moss tickles her feet and the log is relatively dry and warm. If all of a sudden it gets soft on her, she has to adjust her balance quickly to keep from falling in the marsh that surrounds her. The water from the marsh trickles over her feet and mud gets in between her toes. She experiences a moment of fear and then joy as she realizes she is not going to fall in. She keeps walking, and once off the log she feels the crunchy dried-up leaves of the forest crackle under her feet.
Walking on the log not only ignited all of her senses at the same time, but it also challenged her to react, tested her balance, and required that she learn to persevere in the face of difficulty. The outdoors is unpredictable, and oftentimes children will come across things that are unexpected. The outdoors forces them to assess their environment and evaluate risks. When a young child becomes adept at evaluating her environment, assessing risks, and accepting challenges, she also becomes confident. As children learn to navigate uneven terrain without falling, figure out how to cross a stream without getting wet, and successfully hike up mountains with their parents, they learn to gather their strength and persist, even when something seems difficult or impossible. They learn what they are physically and mentally capable of when they try and try again.
Evaluating risks and taking challenges while playing outdoors every day is rewarding in many ways:
By design nature is inherently therapeutic. Everything from the scents of flowers to the sounds of birds stimulate the senses and set children up for healthy sensory integration. We are going to spend some time now learning about how some of the senses are not only enhanced by but literally thrive when children play or even look at natural settings.
Adam Alter, an assistant professor of marketing and psychology at New York University’s Stern School of Business, describes the phenomenon of how nature is calming perfectly. “Nature restores mental functioning in the same way that food and water restore bodies. The business of everyday life—dodging traffic, making decisions and judgment calls, interacting with strangers—is depleting, and what man-made environments take away from us, nature gives back” (2013).
Letting children play outdoors, away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, provides respite. It gives them a break from the constant routine, the Hurry up, we are going to be late requests; bright colors; noxious smells; and noise and commotion that the man-made world has created. It allows them to unwind and recharge. I regularly observe nature having a calming effect on children. In fact, at TimberNook we’ve noticed that children are louder and more active when close to buildings versus when playing in the river or woods. Away from buildings, time and time again, children disperse, get quiet, and find purpose.
Even simply looking at nature is calming for children. Researchers asked a hundred sets of parents—whose children presented with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder—how their children responded to different playtime activities. The children who sat indoors in a room with natural views were calmer than children who played outside in man-made environments devoid of grass and trees (Taylor, Kuo, and Sullivan 2001). This study shows that whether children are indoors or outdoors, having nature present is a key ingredient to grounding and relaxation.
We know now that nature stimuli are calming to children. Although complete immersion in nature, away from buildings, provides total restoration for children and should be done when possible, this may not be practical or even possible for everyone. Simply looking at or being around some nature stimuli will certainly help children to relax. Consider growing a garden for your child to interact with, planting trees, even just having a small area of grass for your child to play on; all these examples provide benefits that blacktop alone can’t provide. In addition to providing this access to nature at home, try taking occasional trips to state and national parks to enjoy nature as a family.
Nature stimuli are often subtle and mild. The colors found in nature are typically gentle on the eyes. They do not overpower or overstimulate. We learned from the study mentioned above that simply looking at nature calms children. As human beings, we rely heavily on our visual sense. What we allow our children to see on a daily basis will affect their mood, temperament, and ability to focus. Also, playing outdoors can positively affect the function and growth of the eyes. The following section will touch upon both of these aspects of children’s vision.
My old office was awash in bright colors designed to excite children. However, since most everything in the clinic was screaming Look at me!, children became visually overwhelmed in that space.
My oldest daughter, for example, used to love to visit the therapy clinic. However, as soon as she entered the room she lost the ability to effectively regulate her senses. Her visual sense became so overwhelmed that everything else went out the window. For instance, the volume of her voice became increasingly louder, and she ran from one piece of equipment to the next in a hyperactive state. She was literally “off the wall.” One reason for this behavior is that our visual sense is designed to alert us to danger, and everything in the clinic caused a heightened state of alertness. Visual overstimulation sent my daughter’s arousal level through the roof.
On the other hand, when my daughter played in the woods she had no difficulty controlling her activity level. She was grounded and calm. She was still active, but she maintained control of her body. Why did the natural environment affect my daughter’s ability to regulate her behavior? There are a number of studies that have looked at how visual environments impact learning and mood.
Carnegie Mellon’s Anna Fisher, Karrie Godwin, and Howard Seltman (2014) looked at whether classroom displays affect children’s ability to maintain focus during instruction and when studying lesson content. They found that children in highly decorated classrooms were more distracted, spent more time off task, and demonstrated smaller learning gains compared to when they were in classrooms with blank walls. “We have shown that a classroom’s visual environment can affect how much children learn,” says Fisher. In other words, keeping things visually simple (as nature has already done for us) can assist with learning.
Simply looking at nature can have an uplifting effect on people. In the early 1980s, a researcher analyzed data collected on patients who had undergone gallbladder surgery between 1972 and 1981. The researcher looked at the recovery rates for patients who had different views from their hospital rooms: some had a view of a brick wall, others faced a small stand of deciduous trees. Apart from their differing views, the rooms and treatment methods were identical. On average, nurses recorded four negative notes for each patient with a view of a brick wall. Comments such as “needs much encouragement” and “upset and crying” were common. On the other hand, patients with a view of the trees warranted negative notes only once during their stay.
Those who had a view of nature also recovered faster, and on average they went home a day earlier than their counterparts. The results of the study are quite substantial because they show that the patients who gazed out at a natural scene were four times better off than those who faced a wall (Ulrich 1984).
Man-made environments often utilize colors that are not found in nature. These stronger and more intense visual stimuli can have an alarming effect on our brainstem, particularly the reticular system. The reticular system is responsible for processing and integrating sensory information. It contributes to our level of arousal, or alertness. If the visual stimuli are too forceful, children can experience heightened levels of arousal and activity. On the other hand, softer colors and more subtle visual stimuli have a calming effect on a child’s sensory system. This leads to an organized and calm state that is ideal for promoting healthy sensory integration (Roley, Blanche, and Schaaf 2001). Children need time being in and looking at nature in order to be in an optimal state for play and learning. Allowing nature to be a visual part of children’s lives not only improves their mood and prepares them for learning but sets them up for healthy sensory integration.
Spending time in nature also improves the function of the eyes. As we discussed in chapter one, myopia, or nearsightedness, is at an all-time high. Once thought to be caused by looking at electronic screens for too many hours a day, new studies suggest that children are actually more prone to myopia if they don’t spend enough time outdoors. Schools in Asia have found this research so compelling that they are now trying to increase the amount of outdoor time children have daily in hopes of reducing the need for glasses.
Optometrist Donald Mutti (OD, PhD), of the Ohio State University College of Optometry, says data suggests that children who are “genetically predisposed to myopia are three times less likely to need glasses if they spend more than fourteen hours a week outdoors.” He goes on to say, “But we don’t really know what makes outdoor time so special. If we knew, we could change how we approach myopia” (Ohio State University College of Optometry 2014).
However, scientists do have theories about why spending time outdoors helps reduce instances of myopia. One theory suggests that between the ages of five and nine a child’s eyes are still growing. Sometimes this growth causes the distance between the lens and the retina to lengthen, leading to nearsightedness. Scientists feel that outdoor light may actually help preserve the shape and length of the eye during this growth period. They also believe that the bright light of the sun may be a contributing factor—that the pupil of the eye will respond better (open and close more effectively) if exposed to natural light on a regular basis (Ohio State University College of Optometry 2014). In essence, children’s eyes will function better when exposed to bouts of sunlight.
Children need to spend time outdoors on a daily basis, not only to be exposed to natural visual stimuli that foster the visual sense and help regulate their moods, but also to support healthy eye function and growth.
Loud sirens. Traffic noises. An alarm. Noisy concerts. Blaring music. These types of sounds, also known as noise pollution, often put children into a fight-or-flight response. In such a state they are no longer able to pay attention to what is in front of them (Frick and Young 2012). Our bodies weren’t meant to be in a constant state of arousal or stress. In fact, being exposed to noise pollution for hours every day may actually harm young children.
A group of neuroscientists recently performed a study on rats to measure their response to moderately loud to intense levels of noise for more than an hour. They found that prolonged exposure to loud noise actually alters how the brain processes speech, potentially increasing the difficulty one has distinguishing speech sounds (Reed et al. 2014). If noise can alter the brain of a rat, there is a possibility that it can also alter the brain of a human. If this in fact is true, children who are exposed to loud noises on a regular basis may eventually have trouble processing what they are hearing.
In contrast, researchers have found that nature sounds provide a restorative effect. In a study at Stockholm University, forty adults were exposed to sounds from nature and noisy environments after completing stressful mental arithmetic tasks. The researchers found that the sympathetic nervous system recovered faster when the subjects listened to nature sounds versus the noisy stimuli (Alvarsson, Wiens, and Nilsson 2010). If loud man-made noises can alter the brain so it doesn’t work as effectively, and nature sounds (for example, sounds of waves crashing or crickets chirping) provide healing, it makes sense to advocate for children to be in natural settings in order to enhance and promote positive sensory integration.
There are also great sensory benefits from listening to birds. Many children in occupational therapy wear special headphones a couple of times a day for a few months if they have trouble with hearing and listening. They listen to specially modulated music, some of which contains nature sounds designed to improve children’s mood, attention, auditory processing skills (such as the ability to respond to their name more quickly), social interactions, and activity level. The nature sounds activate the auditory center of the brain, helping children orient themselves to their place in space (Frick and Young 2012).
The results of these occupational therapy programs are incredible. After participating in a listening program, most children display substantial improvements in at least two areas of their life, such as having better sleeping habits, experiencing improved emotional control, and being able to respond to their name quickly and effectively (Frick and Young 2012). One study asked children to draw self-portraits. Before exposure to the prerecorded nature sounds, the children drew pictures with missing noses or arms too low on the body, or their body appeared to be floating in space; the drawings also lacked detail, color, and expression. After three months of participating in a listening program, the same children drew themselves standing on the ground, such as a grassy hill or the beach, with brightly colored details all around them, including plants, dirt, and shrubbery. All body parts were accounted for, many of the faces were smiling, and there was much more detail and color (Frick and Young 2012).
I interviewed Mary Kawar (MS, OT/L), a pediatric occupational therapist who studies the relationships between the vestibular (balance), auditory, and visual systems. She works closely with the developers of a well-known American-based listening program. I asked her if children spent more time outdoors simply listening to birds, would it affect their spatial awareness? “Absolutely!” she answered.
Bird sounds help us orient ourselves to our place in space. For instance, you may hear a bird tweet to your far right, and then another off to the left. These tweets help you locate your position in relation to the sounds coming in. However, since noise pollution really dampens the therapeutic effects of nature sounds, it’s best to be away from city sounds in order to reap the most benefits from birds singing. The sounds of nature will work to improve children’s sensory development over time.
I have to admit, watching children play and explore in the large mud puddles at TimberNook has to be one of my favorite things to do. I think this is one of the most meaningful sensory experiences a child can have.
Picture children knee-deep in muddy water searching intently for slimy green frogs. Some children stand on the edge of the puddle, not so sure about getting their feet dirty at first. A little girl grabs a frog and squeals with delight. “I got one! Oh, he is slippery!” Other children gather around the girl to take a closer look.
Meanwhile, the children who are standing on the side and watching the frog scene slowly but surely take off their rubber shoes and immerse themselves in the puddle. “Yuck! This feels mushy,” a girl says as she processes the new sensations and learns to navigate the water without falling. Another child slips and falls into the puddle. “Ugh!” He is momentarily shocked. No one reacts to his fall. He gets back up and starts laughing. “Look at me! Look how dirty I am!” Another child laughs and purposefully falls into the puddle.
The sensations of getting dirty and messy in real mud offer children an invaluable rich and tactile experience. The tactile system is flexible, and through exposure to various tactile experiences, children increase their tolerance to different touch sensations. If a child has a poor tolerance to touch, as we learned in chapter two, he may have trouble wearing a variety of different clothing, may refuse to go barefoot, and may even have trouble with school tasks such as using glue without getting upset. That’s why it is important to expose children to a variety of different textures at an early age.
It is one of the many reasons why there’s a growing trend for parenting blogs to include sensory activities—from shaving-cream play to creating slime and differently textured playdough. These experiences are fun and entertaining to children for a short period of time; however, playing outdoors often expands the touch experience to involve the whole body, further enhancing the sensory benefits.
For a better understanding of this notion, let’s compare playing indoors with a bin full of sand to being on the beach. The child indoors will most likely engage only his hands in the sensory bin. He may play with plastic scoops and containers. He’ll probably sit under the watchful eye of an adult.
Now picture this same child on the beach. The sensations of the sun warm the boy’s skin. Water splashes on him and his feet sink in the mud as he fills the bucket with cold, crisp water. He kneels down next to his sand castle—exposing more of his body to the rough sensations of sand. He digs with his fingers to make a moat around the castle. He finds slimy seaweed and rough, spiky shells to line his castle with. By the time he is done building his sand castle, hours later since he took breaks to swim and eat, he is covered from head to toe in sand and mud and has a huge grin on his face.
Although the first experience may be what we think of when we say “give the child a sensory experience,” in the second example many more senses were ignited. The sensations of temperature and exposure to different tactile experiences (slimy seaweed and rough shells) only expanded his sensory repertoire. His whole body was exposed to the sand, not just his hands.
Also, when children are pushing, pulling, or digging on the beach, they are better tolerating and integrating light touch experiences, such as a soft wind blowing on the face and the feel of the sand. Children with sensory-processing issues can sometimes be extremely averse to light-touch stimuli, such as playing in the sand or having seaweed brush up against the skin, when they are experienced in isolation. However, the bigger movements of playing on the beach help override the light-touch sensations and improve tolerance (Ayres 2000). Beach play versus playing with a bin of sand may also be more meaningful to young children, motivating them to play for a longer period of time and to get creative with castle design.
Not only does getting dirty and muddy outdoors increase tolerance of touch experiences, but it also improves the immune system.
Mud. Wet and sticky mud. Most children can’t resist it. Getting dirty and even sampling a little bit of dirt doesn’t hurt. In fact, it can be downright healthy for your child. Exposure to dirt, animals, and germs from an early age on can actually improve the immune system. We’ve long known that children who grow up on farms tend to not have asthma, tend to have fewer allergies, and are less likely to have autoimmune disorders than children who grow up in urban areas (Brody 2009).
Researchers are finding that overuse of sanitizer, cleaning every surface in the house, taking a bath every day, sterilizing all baby equipment, and washing hands always before eating is hurting our immune systems. They call this the hygiene hypothesis. The US Food and Drug Administration reports that “the immune response is derailed by the extremely clean household environments often found in the developed world. In other words, the young child’s environment can be ‘too clean’ to pose an effective challenge to a maturing immune system” (2015).
According to the hygiene hypothesis, the problem with extremely clean environments is that they fail to provide the necessary exposure to germs that strengthens the immune system so it can protect us from infectious organisms. Instead, its defense responses become so inadequate that they actually contribute to the development of asthma and allergies (Okada et al. 2010). Therefore, in order to develop a strong and healthy immune system, it is essential for children to be exposed to the outdoors—especially if that exposure involves getting dirty.
Not only does going barefoot in nature help to develop and fine-tune touch senses in the feet, it also strengthens the arches. Consider this evidence. Doctors at a medical college in India, where most children in rural towns typically don’t wear shoes, noticed that children from the more rural towns rarely presented with flat feet. Most of their clients who had flat feet were from urban areas. They decided to look into this further by analyzing the static footprints of 2,300 children. They found that children who wore shoes were significantly more likely to have flat feet compared to those who did not. They also found that the critical period for the development of the arch occurred before the age of six. Their study suggested that wearing shoes in early childhood is detrimental to the development of a normal, or high, medial longitudinal arch (Rao and Joseph 1992).
When researching the importance of going barefoot, I came across Katy Bowman, a biomechanical expert and founder of the Restorative Exercise Institute. She has this to say about young children wearing shoes most of the time: “Shoes alter human movement. Many of the ailments we suffer from, musculoskeletally speaking, are a result of our dependence on footwear and the strain on the ligaments and plantar fascia from decades of muscle atrophy. If you can start a kid off with a preference to minimal footwear, it saves time and degeneration” (Crawford 2013).
When my youngest daughter was really young, she presented with flat feet. She even needed physical therapy and wore braces for a while to support her ankles and arches. However, it wasn’t until she started going almost completely barefoot in the summers that we began to notice a real change. She now has nicely developed ankles and arches and walks fluidly.
Walking outdoors offers natural messages to children’s feet as they walk on different-sized pebbles and uneven ground. The resistance and inconsistency nature offers integrates reflexes in the foot and forms strong arches. Going barefoot out in nature helps to develop normal gait patterns, balance, and tolerance of touch in the feet, all of which provide a strong foundation for confident and fluid movement.
Taste. Just the word makes the mouth water. Taste is a sense that tells us something about our environment. Young babies put things in their mouth to gather information about the environment. I’ve seen plenty of moms prevent their children from putting pieces of nature, such as dirt, leaves, and pinecones, in their mouth. Instead, babies today are offered plastic rattles and toys that are engineered to offer sensory feedback. However, nature provides a variety of taste and texture experiences that are hard to replicate in toys or other man-made items.
Do you have a child who’s a picky eater? Many children today have a decreased tolerance for exploring new textures in the mouth, which often correlates with having trouble trying new foods. Other children have trouble with awareness in and around their mouths. Letting children put dirt or pinecones in their mouth at an early age won’t hurt them. In fact, babies learn about their environment through their mouth first. Doing so increases their tolerance of new sensory stimuli in and around the mouth. (However, be careful that they don’t put small objects, like rocks and acorns or even animal droppings, in their mouth.) The safety implications of this will be discussed in detail in chapter eight.
Not only does exploring natural items with the mouth improve tolerance and oral sensory awareness in children, it’s also good for improving their immune system (as we started to learn about with the hygiene hypothesis discussion earlier in this chapter). In her book Why Dirt Is Good, microbiology and immunology instructor Mary Ruebush suggests that when a child puts an object in his mouth, he is allowing his immune response to explore his environment. Not only does this allow for the “practice” of immune responses, which is necessary for protection, but putting objects in the mouth also plays a critical role in teaching the immune system what stimuli are harmful and best to avoid (Brody 2009).
For older children, gathering food (berries, nuts, fruit) right out of nature, as our ancestors did, offers a richer sensory experience than buying these foods after they’ve been sitting in a supermarket for weeks. For instance, biting into a fresh apple is not only healthier but also a juicier, more flavorful, and even noisier experience than eating an apple from the grocery store. These sensations enhance the sensory experience, therefore enhancing the sensory memories.
Not only are children today presenting with decreased tolerance to touch, many kids are not tolerating different scents. Some kids even gag when they smell new things. Nature offers many benefits to our sense of smell. When you’re in nature, you don’t smell just one scent but rather a multitude of scents with varying intensities. These tell us information about the environment around us. Indoors, the scents are more constant. Indoors you’ll find more man-made and potentially harmful scents, such as cleaning chemicals or fresh paint. Outdoors, you may smell the scents of fall, farm animals, or freshly cut grass, none of which are harmful to our senses.
In fact, natural scents are often used in therapy. This practice is called aromatherapy. The essential oils derived from plants and other things found in nature stimulate small receptors in the nose, which then send messages through the nervous system to the limbic system—the part of the brain that controls emotions. Natural aromatherapy smells can relax patients and provide them with a sense of tranquility (University of Maryland Medical Center 2011). In other words, simply letting your children smell different things in nature will help them regulate emotions.
The following examples are specific outdoor experiences for children that ignite many of the senses.
Let your children go barefoot as much as possible both indoors and outdoors. If they have to wear shoes, consider slippers or minimalist shoes that allow the arches of the feet to receive input from both natural and man-made surfaces.
Many farms offer seasonal pick-your-own edibles, from blueberries and strawberries to pumpkins and apples. Not near a farm? Try food-oriented festivals and farmers markets, where children can sample different items while having fun outdoors. Making a pie or muffins with your children using the fresh berries they picked is a meaningful sensory experience. Children not only learn where food comes from but they engage their senses of smell, sight, hearing, taste, and proprioception as they mix, measure, and taste the batter.
Gardening with children offers many sensory benefits. They get to dig in the dirt, use a watering can, nurture living plants, taste fresh foods, learn to tolerate new textures, and broaden their food horizon. Smelling the herbs and flowers they grow is also a great olfactory (smell) experience.
Identifying different bird sounds is a great auditory (sound) skill. Offer children an Audubon bird identification book so they can learn to look up the birds that they hear and see. Teach them how to make birdcalls using only their hands and voice.
Playing a game such as hide and seek in the dark offers a challenging sensory experience. Many children rely heavily on their visual system to navigate their surroundings. When this is taken away, the balance and proprioceptive (joint and muscle sense) systems need to work harder to keep children upright and coordinated as they travel through the dark. Also, lying down and hiding during a game of hide and seek gets children up close and personal with leaves, dirt, and other tactile experiences. Furthermore, because they are in play, they will often tolerate things they wouldn’t normally tolerate (lying down on wet leaves, playing in the dark), especially when playing with other children.
Caring for animals both big and small exposes children to a lot of different textures, smells, sounds, and sights. Therapists have used dogs and horses and other animals for many years in order to work on all sorts of physical, emotional, and intellectual skills with children. Farm animals, such as alpacas, sheep, cows, goats, chickens, and pigs, offer children a variety of sensory input. However, even a cat or a hamster can offer great sensory experiences.
The beach is a whole-body experience that stimulates the senses of touch (sand, water, varying temperatures), proprioception (digging in the dirt), hearing (birds, crashing waves), seeing (scurrying crabs, landing seagulls), and vestibular (reaching down to fill a pail with water, running on the soft sand).
Tree climbing is a great way for children to learn how to assess risk and their own abilities. As a parent, this may scare you. But fear not, it is important for children to learn these skills before taking bigger risks, such as getting behind the wheel of a car. How does climbing challenge children? As children climb, they learn to check the branches to make sure they are not dead, broken, or unstable. They climb only as high as they feel comfortable.
Oftentimes, children will only climb a few feet off the ground before wanting to come back down. They aren’t yet ready for the challenge of going higher. However, through practice and more practice they learn what their bodies are capable of and how to assess their environment for potential hazards—both important life lessons for children.
Cooking over an open fire is often a very meaningful and delightful experience for children. I have found that many children are willing to try new food when it is cooked over a fire. The sheer thrill of participating in the preparation of food inspires many children to at least try the food they worked so hard to create. They learn to have patience when cooking over a fire and enjoy new smells as well.
Plan a family vacation to a state or national park where every member of the family can recalibrate and rejuvenate in nature for at least three days. Just as a daily dose of nature is important, so is the occasional total immersion.
While man-made environments may excite children, they may overwhelm or overstimulate them. Indoor environments can also understimulate and offer few sensory benefits to children. The great outdoors, on the other hand, offers limitless possibilities for play experiences and exploration of the senses, enhancing and refining the senses through repeated practice. It is through daily play outdoors that your children will challenge and strengthen their senses of touch, vision, hearing, smell, taste, and much more!