Motor function/development

Studies show that spending time outdoors promotes holistic health and facilitates healthy cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development among children. Spending time outdoors can also foster empathy for wildlife, inspire love for the natural world, and promote nature connectedness. Given these benefits, the outdoor education (OE) movement—which aims to foster environmental stewardship and enhance learning and development—has taken root in countries around the world. Forest School (FS) is a branch of OE that focuses primarily on early childhood education.

Understanding how young children develop an awareness of the natural world is vital to creating effective environmental education programs. However, few researchers have studied how embodied experiences, with hands-on interactions in natural spaces, impact the ways in which children relate to and think about the environment.

Although many traditional educational approaches aim to help learners shore up knowledge and skills where they may have weaknesses, a strengths-based approach accentuates the learner's strengths. The authors of this study used an outdoor adventure course to illustrate how a strengths-based approach can result in positive outcomes in personal growth.