Creative outdoor provocations for babies

Getting outdoors with babies can be difficult. There is always a lot to consider in the transition from indoors to outdoors (Outdoor play experiences in the baby room). But even once you’re outside with babies, there can still be challenges. We tend to romanticise outdoor play and assume that every child, including every baby, is going to adore being outside. It’s not that simple though, and there’s some work for the baby room educator to do to create outdoor provocations that engage babies. In this blogpost, we’re going to cover:

• Why it’s always important to start with what nature has to offer
• An approach we can take to turn aspects of the natural environment into creative outdoor provocations for babies
• A worked example of planning a creative outdoor provocation for babies, so that you can see the process in action and apply it in your own context

I hope that by the end of this blogpost you’ll feel more confident in planning outdoor experiences for babies.

Always start with nature…

I’m going to start with a plea: when you’re planning outdoor provocations, always start with nature. Sometimes we talk about ‘bringing the outdoors in’ and I’ve people talk about ‘bringing the indoors out’. There’s an element of this idea which is helpful: babies do need to feel comfortable and secure and resources from the indoor environment (e.g. cushions, blankets) can help with this. But when it comes to what the baby is going to engage with when they are outdoors, start with what nature offers to us. There is no need to bring toys or resources out as the main source of babies’ stimulation when outdoors. There are three reasons to start with nature instead:

First, natural resources are high in ‘slippage’ and therefore promote curiosity and creativity. Slippage is essentially how much you can do with an object or resource. Resources that are high in slippage are those that have many possible uses, while those that are low in slippage tend to get used in the same way over and over again. Most toys are low in slippage because they are designed to be used in a particular way. Think about a toy phone – it is designed to be used in imaginary play to represent a phone. On the other hand, natural resources like sticks, mud and leaves, don’t need to be used in any one particular way and the possibilities are endless. If we want to encourage babies’ creativity, curiosity and imagination, let’s embrace natural ‘high slippage’ resources. 

Second, the natural world is constantly changing and offers all the stimulation we need. When we’re inside with babies, the novelty is driven by us. To bring new stimulation into the room, we might change the environment, the activity or our interactions. But the natural world is a constant source of novel stimulation. If you were to step outside of your door right now for 10 minutes, what differences would you experience in that time period? You would experience novelty through changes in temperature, rain, the clouds moving across the sky, branches moving, animals moving through the space, and much more. Nature is therefore such a rich starting point for creative provocations, we really don’t need to bring anything else into the mix.

Finally, science that connecting with nature helps us to feel calmer and happier. There is a whole body of research that shows how connecting with nature helps us to feel calmer and happier in ourselves. This applies to us as adults, but it also applies to babies. The human brain needs to feel part of nature and when we engage with natural provocations, we feel the benefits.  

Start with nature, but you don’t need to get hung up on how much nature you have

Your nursery garden may well be a concrete backyard space with no plants. It doesn’t matter too much – you will still find nature in this space. The sky will be above you, animals will still come to visit (less regularly, but they will turn up from time to time!), the wind will blow and the temperature will change. Yes, it might help to bring a little more nature into the space and you can easily do this through a few plants or a bird-feeder, but you don’t need to get too obsessed about creating a perfect outdoor environment for the babies that is brimming with nature.

I’ve seen nurseries that have an amazing outdoor space, sometimes on the edge of a forest or based on farmland, but it doesn’t automatically make it easy to engage babies in outdoor experiences. Whether you’ve got tons of wonderful, lively nature-based spaces, or very little, effective practice with babies still depends on how we bring the nature to the babies and that’s what we’re going to think through next.

Bringing nature to babies

Am I safe? Am I loved? What can I learn?

These are the three questions that the brain asks, and it asks them in this order.

Our brains first ask ‘Am I safe?’ When we feel physically safe, our brains ask the question ‘Am I loved?’, looking for emotional security and attachment. Only if safety and love are in place can the brain move onto exploration, curiosity and learning: ‘What can I learn?’

This model of understanding brains (including babies’ brains) is helpful when we think about how to see the natural environment through a baby’s eyes to help them engage creatively with what they find outdoors.

When we’re setting up a creative outdoor provocation based on nature, our role as the baby room educator is to ask the following:

• Is it physically safe and comfortable for the baby? (Am I safe?)
• Is it emotionally safe? Is there a secure base for the baby as they explore the provocation? (Am I loved?)
• How can we enhance the fascination and inquiry unfolding in the baby’s mind and body? (What can I learn?)

Let’s make this real through an example…

Let’s work with the idea of the sky as a starting for a creative outdoor provocation. The sky has huge potential as a provocation for learning: it is constantly changing, the colours are vivid and it is accessible to all babies regardless of their age or stage. The youngest babies can lie on their backs and look up at the sky. If we want to take the sky and develop it as a creative provocation, we’ll consider each of our three questions in turn.

Is it physically safe and comfortable for the baby?

Consider looking up at the sky. Is that a safe and comfortable thing for a baby to do? It can be, but we need to be aware of a few things. Have you recently lied down on your back and looked up directly at the sky? If so, you might notice that, even on a cloudy day, the sky can be unbearably bright. It can be uncomfortable to look directly at the sky and can even hurt our eyes. With a baby, what can we do to help with that? We might lay the baby beneath something that gives a little shelter and blocks the direct light e.g. the dappled leaves of a tree, or perhaps they lie beneath some kind of canopy that lets some of the light through but not all of the light. Considering physical comfort, we will also want to think about what they’re lying on and whether they’re comfortable. Some babies really don’t like the feel of grass beneath them, so we might want to adapt the space with softer blankets.

Is it emotionally safe? Is there a secure base for the baby?

How will the baby know to feel safe and secure while lying on their blanket and looking up through the trees at the dappled light? What makes a baby feel safe? Babies need to know where their secure base is, and even when they don’t physically need us, they like to know where we are. To help with this, we might lie down next to them or sit cross-legged so that they can see us from the corner of their eye. We might sing a song so that even when they cannot see us, they can hear our voice and know that we are close by. We might give the baby something to hold that they associate with emotional comfort, like a cuddly toy that they particularly like to hold and be close to. Perhaps the blanket that they are lying on fulfils two purposes – making them more physically comfortable, but also feel more emotionally secure because it’s a familiar smell that they know. Remember that in the outdoor environment, there are so many new smells and sensations going on that familiarity is particularly important.

How can we enhance the fascination and inquiry going on in the baby’s mind?

Let’s assume that the baby is physically comfortable and emotionally secure. They feel safe and loved. At this point, they are open to learning about the environment around them and about themselves. So how might we support them to engage in this learning? We may find ourselves talking about what we are experiencing, or what we think they might be able to see from where they lie. We might play with the light as it comes through the trees, pointing out the shadows or even making shadows with our own hands. Perhaps we have brought out some resources that can help to introduce new sensations, like coloured magnatiles that they might look through to change the colour of the light. The whole experience is a perfect opportunity to spot babies’ fascinations and build on this through baby-led planning.  

Make a set of commitments

If you go through the process above, you can develop the ideas into a set of 3-7 commitments around the nature-based provocation that you can action as a baby room team. For the example of the sky above, these might be something like:

• We will start with the babies under the trees, where the light is dappled and less bright.  
• We will take out cosy blankets for the babies to lie on.
• One of us will lie with the littlest babies under the tree, so that they can feel us beside them.
• We will talk and sing gently so that they can hear us and feel close.
• We will talk and sing about what we can see and what the babies see from their perspective.

Sounds simple right? But these commitments are age-appropriate planning for babies’ experiences outside and there is no need to go further than this.

What other nature-based provocations can you do this with?

You can go through this process for lots of things that occur in the natural environment. What you’ll notice is that for each of these, we start with what nature has given us and we work with that using those three questions to guide us. We might start with:

• Rain
• Wind
• Grass
• Things that appear in the sky e.g. the moon, or in Winter, we might even be able to start with the stars
• Moss
• Leaves
• Standing water e.g. puddles
• Animals e.g. squirrels
• Plants e.g. dandelions

For the animals and the plants, it’s worth thinking about a specific animal or a specific plant as the starting point for the provocation. How you think about babies engaging with tomato plants will be different to how you anticipate babies engaging with a stinging nettle!

Integrating this into your planning and practice

There’s a lot to consider and try here, so let’s break it down into a few easy to take steps:

1. Work with YOUR outdoor space. Spend 10-15 minutes in your nursery garden and write down what nature-based provocations are available to you. Even if you have a little concrete backyard, write down how nature comes into that space e.g. ‘sky, tomato plants, light at different times of day, changing temperature, rain, wind’.
2. Take your top three potential nature-based provocations that you’ve identified and plan to engage with these one by one. It might be that you look at one a week with the babies, or even one a month if you want to spend longer and go deeper.
3. With the first of the provocations, apply the approach: Is it physically safe and comfortable? Is it emotionally safe and secure? How can we enhance babies’ fascination and inquiry around this natural provocation? Use these questions to brainstorm what you’ll do as a team and make a set of commitments as we looked at with the ‘Sky’ example given above.

Now during your outdoor time, you’ll have this nature-based provocation at the forefront of your mind. It doesn’t mean that you can’t engage with anything else when you’re outdoors and unfortunately it doesn’t mean that the babies will always love being outside and have a fantastic time. You can’t control what babies are interested in and how they feel in themselves on a particular day at a particular time. However, this planning process will hopefully give you a little more focus and sense of purpose when you’re outside with the babies and you’ll know that you’re helping them to get the most from the experience.