The Importance of Going Outside for Health and Wellness
Summarized by Karola Marais, Sleep Coach (Baby-Led Sleep Certification candidate)
Reference: Based on the concepts of schemas and outdoor learning featured in Kait Vanosch’s Baby-Led Sleep materials, with gratitude to the original authors and researchers who explored child development and play.
Let us explore why stepping outdoors is essential for health and wellness, how exposure to natural environments supports children and families, and practical ideas for outdoor activities that honor each child’s unique learning patterns.
Watching children at play reveals that their actions are purposeful, patterned, and endlessly curious. This is especially true when they explore outdoors, where the world becomes a living classroom. Outdoor time provides fertile ground for developing health and wellness—physically, emotionally, and cognitively—by aligning with children’s natural drive to investigate, move, and connect with the environment. By understanding and honoring these patterns, or schemas, parents can thoughtfully design outdoor experiences that nurture deep, holistic growth while supporting restful, restorative sleep later on.
The concept of schemas helps explain why outdoor experiences feel so enriching. Schemas are the patterns through which children make sense of their world: they test, repeat, and connect ideas and objects to discover how things work. Outdoors offers a vast, low-pressure landscape where children can engage these schemas freely—whether they are attracted to vertical trajectories (climbing, ladders, hills), horizontal trajectories (lined paths, pushing carts), transporting (carrying natural objects to new places), rotation (spinning wheels, turning handles), enveloping and enclosing (covering and shelter-building with natural materials), or filling (scooping water, pouring sand). In open air, there are fewer constraints and less social pressure to perform, which can reduce stress and encourage authentic exploration.
Outdoor time supports overall health and wellness in several key ways:
1) Physical health: Frequent movement, climbing, walking on logs, and balancing activities strengthen gross motor skills, balance, and endurance.
2) Mental health: Nature offers sensory richness, reduced overstimulation, and opportunities for calm focus, which can alleviate anxiety and improve mood.
3) Sleep quality: Regular outdoor activity helps regulate circadian rhythms through natural light exposure and energy expenditure, promoting easier settling and deeper sleep.
4) Social-emotional development: Unstructured outdoor play invites cooperation, problem-solving, and imagination, fostering resilience and social skills.
5) Cognitive development: Interacting with natural materials and varied landscapes supports attention, curiosity, and executive function as children experiment with cause-and-effect, prediction, and planning.
The outdoor environment also presents a reliable canvas for observing and honoring each child’s unique schema. Some children may show a strong preference for vertical actions (jumping, climbing, stacking), others for parallel lines and movement (walking along lines, sweeping), and others for collecting, sorting, or connecting objects. By recognizing these patterns, caregivers can design outdoor activities that deepen understanding, maintain engagement, and gently extend learning.
An outdoor setting provides the widest array of opportunities for children to explore their schemas—from tiny, tactile experiences to large, expansive activities—without the indoor constraints of noise or mess. Observing children outside often makes schemas more visible in their natural, free play, especially when toys are minimal or absent and children are allowed to direct their own exploration.
Tips for integrating outdoor time with schema-informed learning:
1) Observe first, then expand: Spend a few minutes watching your child outdoors. Notice which schemas appear naturally and how they engage with the environment.
2) Plan loosely; follow the child: Provide simple materials (e.g., varied-sized containers, rope, sticks, blankets, water), and let the child lead the activity. Add new elements only if curiosity wanes.
3) Create safe opportunities for risk-taking: Encourage climbing, balancing, and building with natural materials, while ensuring safety considerations are in place.
4) Pace the environment to suit energy levels: Alternate active outdoor play with quieter nature experiences (listening to birds, feeling the breeze, observing leaves).
Outdoor activity ideas that align with schemas:
- Painting with rollers and brushes using mud or water
- Writing or drawing with sticks in mud or sand
- Building rock or log towers; knocking them down and rebuilding
- Sweeping leaves or sand to practice motion and control
- Constructing levers, pulleys, and rope-based challenges
- Watching streams and observing water flow and ripples
- Walking along logs or narrow ledges to build balance
- Physical play: banging, hammering with safe tools, rolling logs, or spinning objects
- Sorting and lining up natural objects by size, color, or length
- Moving and planting natural items (seeds, bulbs, leaves)
- Collecting nature treasures in baskets, then organizing or counting them
- Crafting a fishing rod from sticks and grass
- Fastening crowns or jewelry from flower stems
- Exploring tread patterns with footprints or wheel-like objects
- Building shelters with tarps and rope
Creating mandalas from leaves, flowers, grass, and rocks
- Playing with hula hoops and parachutes
- Building forts to sit in, or fairy/animal houses from sticks
- Covering a space or object with natural materials for role-play
Even very young babies benefit from outside time. Simply lying in a bassinet to watch the trees sway or feeling the breeze on the skin can be soothing and stimulating. Parents don’t always need to entertain; nature often provides the richest, most effortless form of engagement. This is amazing for a new mom, with a newborn.
As we honor each child’s intrinsic curiosity and schemas, outdoor experiences can become powerful catalysts for health, wellness, and restful sleep. By observing, following, and gently extending their spontaneous play outdoors, we nurture a lifelong relationship with nature that supports physical vitality, emotional balance, and cognitive growth.
I acknowledge and thank Kait Vanosch and the Baby-Led Sleep Certification team ( https://islagrace.ca/sleep-coaching/ref/karola.marais/ ) for their foundational work in observing schemas and advocating for child-led exploration. Special thanks to the original authors and researchers who have contributed to our understanding of child development and play.