Outdoor Play at Aspire Truganina
Outdoor experiences are a fun way for children to interact with their peers, experience the natural environment and engage in different activities. As an early education provider, we understand that engaging in outdoor play as part of our daily program improves the overall health of our young children. At our Aspire Truganina centre, they implement a range of outdoor experiences and activities that promote different skills, while exploring and having fun!
Discover some of these activities and the benefits of outdoor play below.
Benefits of Outdoor Play
Outdoor play provides many benefits to a child’s physical, social, and emotional development and growth.
Playing outside helps children gain fine and gross motor skills, test their physical limits, and improve their muscle strength. This promotes their overall physical health and activity levels, which can help improve their mood as well. Outdoor play also has numerous social benefits such as increasing communication and building stronger connections with other children. Many outdoor activities such as playing sports or games give children the opportunity to work as a team, develop deeper friendships and promote greater self-awareness.
Outdoor experiences can also provide an opportunity to explore, discover and appreciate the natural environment, which allows children to use all of their senses and promotes greater intellectual development.
Outdoor Experiences at Aspire Truganina
We are fortunate at Aspire Truganina to have a spacious outdoor yard area on the 2nd floor of our centre. Our outdoor yard features a playground with a slide and climbing wall, sandpits and veggie gardens that provide different experiences for the children to engage in.
With educator supervision, the children love climbing on the rock-climbing wall, and going down the slide on the playground. This provides a fun experience that supports the children in developing their confidence and self-esteem. The sandpit also offers many opportunities for learning and connecting, while using buckets and scoops to build things with the sand. It also helps develop the children’s fine and gross motor skills and promotes imaginative play. The outdoor yard also features beams and stepping stones that are used to support the children’s balancing skills, confidence and physical development.
The children also participate in different activities in the outdoor yard which are run by our educators. Recently our toddler children discovered farm animals around the yard. This was a fun experience that allowed them to explore and be aware of their surroundings while also engaging with their peers. The children also love having story time outside, which provides exposure to nature and a different environment for them to engage in their reading time.
Learning about the Outdoor Environment and Sustainability
Truganina’s outdoor area also includes a vegetable garden, where the Kinder children look after and harvest different vegetables including apples, tomatoes, broad beans, strawberries, and lettuce. This teaches the children to learn to care for the environment and grow vegetables by planting, preparing the soil, watering, and observing how they grow. This creates a fun but also educational experience and journey for the children.
Recently Aspire Truganina also implemented a sustainability incursion program for the kinder children run by Little Sprouts. This is an early childhood program that helps embed environmental education and sustainability practices in a way that is engaging and helpful for young minds. Our kinder children have loved the program and learning more about our environment and different sustainability practices.
If you are interested in exploring our Aspire Truganina centre or want to learn more about our programs, book a tour of our centre. If you would like to enrol your child or have an enquiry, contact us on 1800 978 429.
