COMMUNITY WALK PROGRAM
Community Walk Program
Our community walk and nature play program was established to build a sense of belonging, connection, and to broaden our learning community. We view our children as active citizens, ones with rights and potential, and through making them visible in their local neighbourhood and wider community, we demonstrate to others how capable and important children are to building relationships that are authentic and reciprocal. Through our walking program we ensure that “children are connected with and contribute to their world.” (DEEWR, 2009, p28). We believe that as we walk out our front door, many new doors open and welcome us in.
Why Engage in Community Walks?
“We must teach our children to smell the earth, to taste ethe rain, to touch the wind to see things grow, to hear the sun rise and night fall – to care” – John Cleal.
At Three Peas Creche, we know when children embrace the world around them, possibilities grow, understandings develop, and connections are made. Our main goal for exploring our wider community stems from wanting our little Peas to become confident and capable citizens, showing curiosity, respect and engagement with the people, places and creatures that inhabit our local area.
Playing and learning in nature builds opportunities for powerful learning. Professor Guy Claxton talks about powerful learning as mind stretching, a disposition that can be learned and fostered. His vocabulary describes the wondering, engaging, explaining, experimenting, imagining, reasoning, collaborating, and reflecting – all positive attributes that children utilise when engaged in outdoor play and learning.
Nature based playgrounds can work effectively to build powerful learning opportunities for children and promote a growth mindset through the provision of risk, challenge, engagement, and process-based play. If you have ever built a cubby, constructed with loose parts, or played in a sandpit, the fun is in the doing, not the final result.
If children are to experience the benefit of risk and challenge in a supervised setting, a positive approach to risk is required.
Our activities for our Community Walk and Nature Play program are diverse and vast, but typical activities and goals may include (though not limited to):
What we do on a nature walk
| Activity | Developmental benefit |
| Playing imaginative games using the resources nature provides | Open-ended learning allows children to explore at their own pace and with their own challenges. |
| Role play | Shared imagination, drama, team work, recollection of models of behavior. |
| Building shelters or other large structures from branches, with the help of other children and adults | This requires goal definition, planning, engineering, teamwork and perseverance. |
| Counting objects or looking for mathematical patterns | Mathematical and visual recognition |
| Drawing scenes | Art, creativity, accurate inspection and copying. |
| Arranging natural available items to make a picture or build something | Art, planning, engineering, teamwork and perseverance, concentration |
| Memory games using naturally available objects | Memory, naming objects |
| Building a fire | Sustainability, heat and science, team work, concentration, goal definition, planning, perseverance |
| Creating a Bush Tucker Garden | Sustainability, goal definition, planning, teamwork, perseverance, ongoing maintenance and tending |
| Meeting key community members on our walk | Building community relationships, caring for our community members, fostering ongoing relationships. |
| Participating in Daddiri | Indigenous practice of mindful meditation in nature |
| Walking within the Bush Kinder / Nature Space | Improves strength and stamina; preparation (e.g., route selection) improves planning and communication skills. |
| Climbing trees, walking on logs and rocks, and exploring bush (See Attachment 1 for Tree Climbing Risk Benefit Analysis |
Improves strength, balance and physical awareness |
| Play involving water where it occurs naturally (for example puddles and on walks in the rain in weather conditions and their effect on the Bush Kinder area (wearing waterproofs – see Bush Kinder Program: Protective Clothing Policy) | Experience and understanding of all the natural environment
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When we go walking:
Our walk program is a progressive program, where we build knowledge, confidence and independence over a period. Our walks begin with short outings into our neighbourhood, and they extend further afield when the educators and children are confident everyone is feeling safe and secure and we extend to times of nature play and child led learning.
Months of operation:
Our program begins late March as the weather gets a little cooler. Prior to heading out of our building we do lots of pre walk discussions with the children and they help us to add to our risk assessment as their thoughts and ideas are valued as part of our planning and programming.
We Discuss:
Road Safety – stop, look, listen and think.
Personal safety – holding hands, staying with teachers, appropriate clothing,
Hazards and risks – what are they? What do they look like sound like?
Emergencies – Emergency Whistle – what is that for? What happens if that is blown?
How to cross a road – this is something that we work up to over a couple of months
Park Safety – how to use natural items with care and respect in our nature play and program.
