Upholding every child’s right to spend ample time outdoors
We are working hard to help you develop wonderful outdoor provision that makes the most of being outside and is effective and enjoyable for everyone.
Our vision is for every child in every setting to have on going access to deep, rich and satisfying high quality outdoor provision.
Our core mission is to empower and enable practitioners and teachers to make the most of being outdoors for nurturing children to thrive and grow in their educational setting.
Our goal is to greatly increase the number of enthusiastic educators with a deep belief in the value of learning through real experiences and play outdoors and who share a commitment to upholding every child’s right to spend ample time outdoors every day throughout the year.
To work towards this, Outdoors Thinking provides training and resources that empower practitioners in harnessing the tremendous potential of the outdoors to enable children to thrive and grow.
We do this by:
• Promoting the deep exploration of the value and importance of being outdoors. • Enabling practitioners to make best use of their outdoor provision through a three cornered approach tackling the why, the what and the how of really good outdoor play.
• Ensuring that our professional development resources are fully relevant, meeting the needs of the workforce for working well with the outdoors, and widely accessible nationally.
• Supporting participants on our training courses with on-going high quality customer services, a growing bank of printed and online materials, and further CPD training & qualification opportunities.
• Enabling strong peer support through communities of practice networks.
What makes us the leading training organisation for outdoor provision in early years settings?
The content and process of Outdoors Thinking Training is underpinned by extensive research-informed knowledge and practice about outdoor provision and learning outdoors. With the combined experience of over 80 years in developing outdoor environments, provision and practice, the qualification has been carefully developed by leading thinkers and specialists in early years outdoor play and learning:
Outdoors Thinking's considerable experience in working outdoors with young children puts us in a unique position to really know how to support educators to take learning outdoors, thanks to a combination of four critical strengths.
- A deep understanding of young children and early childhood education.
- Extensive expertise in working with the outdoors.
- Substantial experience working in further and higher education at the interface between research and practice.
- Highly effective adult professional development.
The outdoors has so much potential to offer to young children and there are exciting times ahead for the field of outdoor play and learning!
