How Outdoor Play Can Help Children To Accept Mistakes

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How Outdoor Play Can Help Children To Accept Mistakes

Being outside is hugely beneficial for children and their development. Children should regularly spend time outdoors to ensure that they get enough exercise and a healthy amount of sunlight for vitamin D production. Outdoor play is also great for supporting mental health and wellbeing. Children who struggle to remain in class can find spending additional time in forest schools is hugely beneficial.

While learning outside, children are bound to make mistakes. Can outdoor play help them to accept these mistakes and how?

What type of Outdoor Play is Good For Learning to accept Mistakes
Outdoor play tends to be more exploratory and active and is where children might be keen to push the boundaries. Playing outside allows them to do this in a safe environment.

So if the children are trying out a new obstacle course, they might have to try and balance on steps that are higher than they are used to. They know it is a safe course but might still get it wrong and fall off. This is where you can encourage the children to brush off scrapes and bumps and how to carry on and try to get it right again.

Children are more likely to relax outside, so it’s a good time to introduce a new learning concept. Such as a new maths technique.

How to Help Children to Accept their Mistakes and Learn from them
The key is to encourage the children to practise while outside and that it might take quite a bit of time to get something right. For example, learning to use a tennis racket and ball. It can take children many attempts to throw the ball up, hit it and then get it over the net!

Encourage the children by offering praise when they make improvements, however small. So the ball went the wrong way, praise them for hitting it and then suggest how to practise getting the ball to go in the right direction.

Another way to help children accept their mistakes is to ask them how they felt about the situation. Did they feel brave trying something new? Did they enjoy it even though they got it wrong? Reflecting on their mistakes and then learning to put them into perspective is a great way to help children grow.

Final Word
Outdoor play is beneficial to children for learning and health. It’s an excellent place for children to try new things, push themselves to see what they can do, and then learn from their mistakes.

Able Canopies Ltd. design, manufacture and install canopies and shade structures at schools, nurseries and educational settings to enable year-round Free Flow Outdoor Play and Outdoor Learning.
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How Outdoor Play Can Help Children To Accept Mistakes

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