This is the first article in a series of nine that introduces the features of effective outdoor learning environments. The values are explored more fully in a book soon to be published by Learning and Teaching Scotland that will support people working with young children to consider the methodology or way that they work with children outside. Ideas and practical applications can be found in the files 'Outdoor Play' and 'Potential of a Puddle'. Refer also to articles on this website.

1. Physical aspects of the area are addressed.

Key points;

• Any outdoor space has the potential for learning.
• Outdoor play spaces can be created using a few basic elements.
• Zones of learning can create bays to settle and focus children, although they should not be used in such a way that they prevent natural connections in learning.

The environment you experience with children may be a wood, seashore, park, or tarmac playground. All of the outdoor spaces have the potential for learning, The role of the adult is to see the potential and respond to it so those children can play and interact with nature.

The vision of an outdoor play area or a garden where children are at play will not look manicured. It is a space where children interact with the elements and therefore want to sit in a puddle, pull grass to make soup or continually walk in a muddy hollow.

Talking with children during the process of designing an area will reveal what they like.

• A place with a range of gradients and slopes that has a variety of hollows, ditches and slopes to roll down, lie in or perhaps hide.
• Access to a range of textures such as mud, grass, water, rock, wood, sand that they can use in creative, messy ways.
• Natural elements so that they can connect to nature such as trees, robust plants such as grass, dock leaves, dandelions and daisies.

With these basic elements children can be supported in their outdoor play through the use of small-scale materials such as buckets to collect daisies, waistcoats to hold the tools of exploration and adventure, old bowls and sticks to create mud pies. If your outdoor space doesn't have these elements then artificially create them. One centre I was working with spread out dry paddling pools on the safety surface and put leaves (collected by the children on a walk) in one, potting compost in another, sand in another and so on. Bags of plants such as Dock were hung on the fence and children were encouraged to pick them and use them as plates, fish, and hats. At the end of the session the 'pools' were either covered over or taken inside by the children.

When the physical space is being developed, many centres use transient structures for a couple of years so that they can modify the plan following observation of the ways that children use the area. In a home environment, the yearly cycle allows parents and carers to change and modify the area in response to maturing children. Dens made out of old blankets, rope and pegs can become more sophisticated as the ideas from children become more developed. The core element is the tree or structure to use as the basis.

There is a tendency to create areas outside that mimic the spaces we create inside our centres and homes. Layout and design does have a direct influence on the way that children interact within a space. If we become too segmented in our design children will loose an essential element of outdoor play..namely freedom. At the other end of that continuum, if children are in very large open spaces we need to create spaces that encourage children to settle. In my designs I consider the idea of hidden spaces that are like rooms, with linking pathways that go through tunnels, under arches.

Watching the behaviours of children has influenced this design work. They have an in built desire to explore schemas such as hiding and finding, travelling, transporting that we can respond to.

Although the area is partially subdivided it should not be too rigid. If it becomes highly structured children will pick up the message that they cannot link riding a bike with water to create a car wash area, with tickets made from leaves and stones for money.