SEVECEN Sayı: 29 - 2019

36 S E V E C E N 2 0 2 0 Şebnem Zor BENEFITS OF OUTDOOR LEARNING IN EARLY YEARS Inside the four walls of a classroom, children can gain knowledge and learn how to pass exams – but they are sedentary apart from a few PE lessons, and shut off from the natural world outside. Working as a team in a natural setting bonds children as a group. It also makes them aware of the need to care for each other and for the environment. Mental-health professionals acknowledge that maintaining a relationship with nature can be very helpful in supporting children’s emotional and mental wellbeing. Therefore, at Sev Kindergarten we strongly believe that young learners’ basic needs for well-being and involvement, and their urge to explore and make sense of the world, is developed through high quality play in an outdoor environment. In every theme of our English curriculum, we include nature based activities in our lesson plans. We take our students out and let them experience the nature around on our beautiful campus. In our first theme “All about me”, we had a scavenger hunt in our garden. We looked for classroom objects hidden around the garden. It was so fun to look for things that we used in the classroom out in nature. In the same theme we also had another lesson on our five senses. We went out and observed our surroundings in detail. We drew the pictures of things we heard, smelled, touched and saw in our garden. We even wanted to taste things but our teacher didn’t let us! As educators of SEV we believe children learn best from experience, by using their senses actively rather than passively, and it’s via these experiences that learning remains with us into adulthood. Alp ABUAF “Where is the paper?” Mila DÜZALAN “I like the garden.”