100 Ideas for Early Years Practitioners: Outdoor Play

Julie Mountain has worked in schools and early years outdoor play projects for over 20 years. She is Operations Director at Play Learning Life (playlearninglife.org.uk), a not-for-profit social enterprise that supports educational communities to exploit the potential of outdoors for learning and play. She is responsible for all the Trust's projects, programmes, CPD and research. This includes dozens of early years and primary programmes, workshops and conferences. She has written articles for many early years publications including Nursery World Magazine and Motherhood Magazine and blogs extensively.Julie Mountain is also the author of the Little book of Free and Found.

Children benefit hugely from regular, frequent and progressive outdoor play, and it should therefore be an integral part of their early education. This addition to the 100 ideas series offers early years practitioners easy-to-implement outdoor play activities and practical advice on managing and evaluating your provision.Dip in and out of the ideas which range in complexity, from 'getting started' activities for practitioners who are inexperienced or less confident about outdoor play, to more challenging strategies for those who have used Forest School ideas. Julie Mountain's wealth of knowledge and abundance of creativity and enthusiasm shines through with activities involving mark making, storytelling, communicating, exploration, maths and mud! In addition, there are guest ideas from outdoor play experts Kierna Corr, Felicity Robinson, Lesley Romanoff, Juliet Robertson, Lily Horseman and Mary Jackson and an extensive further reading section.The ideas in this book will inspire you to get outside and make the most of your outdoor space however big or small it is and whatever the weather decides to throw at you!INCLUDES Teaching tips - Taking it further ideas - Ideas for involving parents - Bonus ideas

Ideas are easy to uses and include step-by-step instructions, teaching tips, taking it further boxes and tips for including parents and carers.

Part 1: Firm foundations/ Part 2: Brilliantly simple starters/ Part 3: Enabling environments/ Part 4: Naturally playful/ Part 5: Inspiring outdoors/ Part 6: Take a risk!/ Part 7: Whatever the weather/ Part 8: Scientists and engineers/ Part 9: Playing out counts/ Part 10: Up and at 'em/ Part 11: Speak out!