Laura Newman. Quality Outdoor Play Environments: How Good Design Integrates Nature and Loose Parts to Support Healthy Play and Development in Young Children. Educare.

Educare Central Maine is a comprehensive early learning and development school in Waterville, Maine. Scroll to the bottom of the webpage for a link to download a guidebook for early childhood professionals. This guidebook provides a step-by-step approach to naturalizing outdoor spaces with concrete and realistic advice that allows even the most novice nature educator to transform outdoor spaces to support children’s access to nature play. Laura Newman is a master of providing easy to follow instructions and creative ideas for all teachers to emulate by including simple natural loose parts (logs, rocks, tree cookies, etc.) and information to involve families and the community.

I used this book (and Laura’s insights as a guest speaker) with my early childhood environments classes at University of Maine at Farmington. Students were introduced to the principles of natural playscapes and designed their own spaces for young children. I appreciated the way the book took them through the process with activities that supported their knowledge of child development.

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