Recently, more emphasis has been placed on the fact that learning in the natural environment may have a tremendous positive effect on children’s developing brain in general, or their early brain development in particular.
Nature-based learning, which can be labeled as outdoor learning or environmental education more broadly, is defined as educational activities that occur in a natural context; a forest, a garden, a park, or even a city square might be the setting for nature-based learning contexts. Studies have identified that learning in a natural environment helps learning to grow higher cognitive performances and yields improved solutions, creativity, concentration, and mental health for children.
Advantages of this method of instruction
Improving Cognitive Abilities via Outdoor Discovery
In nature-based learning, children are required to perform tasks that will see them come up with solutions all on their own.
- Hands-On Learning: These manipulative activities, such as planting seeds, exploring insects, or building stones and sticks, expose children to spatial ability, which is part of globally prescribed cognitive competency for number and science learning.
- Cause-and-Effect Reasoning: Whenever children get an opportunity to mingle with nature, they are able to learn natural things like growth, decaying, and the interdependence of living things. In the process, they are able to associate cause with effect after each occurrence for them to appreciate the effects and results of their actions. For instance, when children learn how to water plants, they are able to learn about caregiving, waiting, and scientific research.
Attention and Awareness
Nature-based learning also has a significant influence on a child’s attention capacity and their ability to pay Attention span. Outdoor spaces are comparatively free from such distractions as opposed to formal classrooms. Besides, because outdoor settings are dynamic and constantly changing, children are likely to engage in fewer instances of time than inside classrooms.
- Attention Restoration Theory: Natural environments can help restore attention by offering children soft fascination, which means that a child’s attention will be directed by some intrinsic factors in nature, such as bird singing, trees moving, or leaves whispering. This restoration of attention promotes better learning assessments when the children are taken through classroom activities.
- Stress Reduction: It has been demonstrated that stress related to the performance of a task decreases in the presence of nature and that nature elicits a state of attention which is more relaxed. The young children who participate in the outdoor activities have reduced stress levels, which helps them to be intelligent, have good memory, and be emotionally healthy.
Developing Vision and Creativity
Environment-based education is important in the following ways: creativity and imagination are two aspects of learners that are nurtured. The relatively unstructured and unfocused approach to play that is afforded in the outside environment can give children room to be creative in ways that cannot be accomplished in a conventional classroom setting.
- Free Play and Exploration: When children are taken out to explore nature and play in it without directions on what to do, they undertake discovery learning, which is creativity. Different child activities that include tree climbing, mimicking animals, constructing castles from twigs and other natural materials, or coming up with a story with reference to the surroundings create imagination in children as well as foster their open-ended problem-solving aptitudes.
- Environmental Inspiration: There are no explicit colour schemes, tastes, sounds, and shapes in natural settings, but they are the best when it comes to provoking children’s imagination. Scenery or environment has remained the best place for arts, music, narration, or any other artwork.
- Developing Abstract Thinking: Nature-based learning promotes academic concepts in a manner that is concrete and close to children’s possible experiences.
Enhancing Learning Memory and Storage
Children in their learning ability are going to be more receptive than when they are passive since they are actively engaging with the environment.
- Experiential Learning: Outdoor learning activities are characterised by children participating in kinesthetic activities that enhance memory. For instance, if students are asked to name different trees or plants during a nature walk, this would enhance the visual and touch memory more than asking the children to recall facts about animals seen or the process of photosynthesis; such children would understand better than those taught in classes.
- Contextual Learning: Kids are able to process information they receive in context; for example, when they discover ecosystems in a forest, they will be able to store that information because they associate it with their own experiences. They found that this type of contextual learning assists kids in arriving at meaning-making for abstract subject matters in terms of everyday experiences.
- Physical Activity and Memory: Climbing, hiking, running, or other exercises which are carried out outside help to provide an adequate supply of blood to the brain and oxygen, which is presumed to help one to improve his or her memory. Also, movement connects new neurons in the brain that are used in memory so that children can easily remember information that is taught in class.
Social and Emotional Advantages That Promote Brain Growth
Playing outdoors feels happy, comfortable, and self-confident as compared to children who play indoors. All these emotional advantages may add decency to the learning environment.
- Self-Esteem and Confidence: According to the findings, children who were able to accomplish tasks successfully in nature, effectively on problem solving, construction, or learning about the environment, were more confident. Self-confidence enhances learning because children aspiring to acquire new knowledge are more vulnerable to going further to seek knowledge after knowing their capabilities.
- Social Skills: Children get to work in groups with other children in nature-based classrooms as they share, work together, and care for other children. Whether they are searching for insects or problem solving, children get to know how to deal with other children and have positive attitudes. Such contacts support the growth of social intelligence, which allows children in their endeavours to relate with others, collaborate, or even negotiate.
- Emotional Regulation: Children who go in contact with nature are always better placed to handle their emotions because nature is always healing. Children enjoy time in the outside environment and are able to receive a number of stimuli through which several senses can be enriched, including body sense, which actually helps them release excess energy and handle anxiety and frustration. This in turn helps with cognition, as when children are not stressed, they are able to approach learning much more efficiently.
Long-Term Academic Success and Cerebral Advantages
Frequent contact with nature has positive effects on children’s academics, and more so those in subjects such as language, mathematics, art, and geography.
- Stronger Academic Performance: A number of studies have evidenced that the outdoor exposures offered by the enhanced OLFA increase performance in math, reading, and science among learners. The importance of academic transfer is accomplished through cross-curriculum because skills learnt from nature-based activities are readily transferable at other places of learning that value such skills as critical thinking, creative thinking, problem solving, and memory.
- Fostering Lifelong Learning: Early experiences in nature lead to an enduring interest in these matters of concern till the advanced ages of human beings. The students who have had positive experience with naturalistic learning may choose to become related experts in STEM because the areas require creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving.
Conclusion
Environmental learning has become very important in the development of the young child’s brain. Due to the participants’ engagement in real-life activities in authentic settings through hands-on practice, Stone offers meaning and purpose to learning, consequently mapping it to critical thinking, memory, and attention skills. If it is vital to improve every sphere of the child’s life and develop a child as an individual and teacher, then the expansion of the context of early education with the help of nature-based learning can be employed as an effective strategy.
At DiYES we have a separate plan and classes to develop the cognitive abilities of the students. We ensure they are well connected with nature-based learning. As one of the best international schools in Kerala, they adhere to the nature-based learning sessions. With the strong knowledge of teachers in nature-based learning, DiYES International School trains students in growing their cognitive skills.