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I am extremely lucky to live in an area where I am surrounded by many walking tracks.  For my walk I chose the Avenue of Honour River Circuit.  As I begun to walk along the track I was immediately drawn to a large gum tree.  It was a very windy day and I watched as the branches moved in the wind.  I felt it was talking to me as the wind whistled threw the air and brushed past the branches.  I stopped for a while to listen to the sounds around me.  I could hear the wind blowing, birds tweeting, the river flowing and the trucks and cars rushing past on the freeway. There were other people also walking along the track.  In this moment I reflected on the video I watched of Pauline Oliveros and R Murray Schafer Hearing and Listening and the importance of experiencing different environments and how we must fully immerse all our senses to experience deep listening.  Even though I am working in a fairly new Kindergarten I am lucky enough to have an outdoor area that offers many opportunities to listen to many different sounds. When it rains we listen to the rain drops on the verandah roof and watch it splash on the ground and form puddles.  Birds often fly through the trees, wattle grows, the trees produce pods and gumnuts, we have apple trees and cars and trucks often pass by.  This has inspired me to encourage the children to use deep listening. In my future teaching practice I hope to be able to give the children strategies to engage in deep listening by using all their senses.  Most importantly I hope to be able to give them moments of stillness and to encourage them to be more aware of their surroundings and to grow a deeper respect for nature (Ungunmerr 1988).

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After my stop at the river I continued my walk along the track.  I took time to soak up my surroundings and noticed things I wouldn’t normally.  I stopped at a tree that had possibly fallen down and now has many branches growing in all different directions.  To most it looks like a fallen tree but to me it looked magical, in that moment I saw it through the eyes of a child.  The bark had all different shades of colour and the branches were all different sizes.  Immediately I wanted to climb the tree.  I imagined climbing the tree to get away from a wild animal chasing me.

Through the natural environment children have the opportunity to move freely. When I think of movement I thought it was about moving from one spot to the next but after watching Movement, Sound and Play I understand it’s more about expressing ideas, being creative and taking on role play, just as I had for a brief moment.  When children are given the opportunity to explore and move around the natural environment they immediately want to interact with the environment.  It’s not about getting from A to B it is more, they want to touch, feel, dig, poke, taste (Wilson 2007).  Through these opportunities children are making meaning through their movements, they are practicing and learning skills.  This has made me reflect on the times where children have been hurried or interrupted during important moments of play.   In my future teaching practice I will allow more time for exploring and look deeper into what is happening,  what messages, stories, ideas or thoughts are being expressed or created during these movements.

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As I continued along the track I found myself stopping near a path that led down to the Lerderderg River. I slowly walked down to the river being careful not to slip.  I reached the waters edge and took a moment to soak it all in.  I noticed the water flowing over the rocks. I wondered if it was cold and was tempted to put my hand in the water.  Watching the river took me back to happy memories of my childhood.  These days were filled with hours and hours of playing by a river, throwing sticks and rocks, making mud pies, going on adventures and pretending to get lost.  It took me back to days where I would have put my hand in the water without any hesitation.

These opportunities I had as a young child to play in the great outdoors has become less common for young children.  Children have less opportunity to play in natural settings, backyards are smaller and children are experiencing more screen time.  This saddens me as it has been proven that outdoor play provides more benefits for a child’s development, dramatic play is more complex and the play is maintained for longer periods of time and is often revisited over several days (Wallin 2019).

In providing an indoor/outdoor program which allows children freedom of choice I have seen the benefits first hand when children engage in imaginative/dramatic play in an outdoor setting.  The opportunities for play are endless, the children have more control, play is open ended and is not contained to one area.  I have observed children engaging in play, acting out roles, expressing their emotions and using the natural materials to make potions and cakes.  In my teaching practice I am going to strive to participate in reflective practice with my peers about the importance of outdoor play and that the natural environment provides many provocations for play and natural materials are great props for dramatic play which provide endless opportunity for young children to develop important skills.

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                                       References

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                                       References

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Ungunmerr-Baumann, M.R 2002 Dadirri: Inner deep listening and quiet still awareness, Emmaus Productions, pp. 1-4, accessed from
http://www.dadirri.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Dadirri-Inner-Deep-Listening-M-R-Ungunmerr-Bauman-Refl1.pdf.

Wallin, L M. (2019, June). Let's Play Outside: The importance of Pretend Play in Natural Settings. Exchange magazine

Wilson, R. (2018). Nature and Young Children: Encouraging Creative Play and Learning in Natural Environments (3rd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315148533