Great Spaces has a specialist design and construction team dedicated to creating Nature Play spaces and structures for early learning, pre-schools, kindergartens, and primary schools. Nature Play revolves around creating outdoor environments encouraging young children to engage with and explore nature playfully and experientially. These spaces intentionally promote unstructured, imaginative, and sensory-rich experiences that support children’s physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development. Key elements of nature play in early learning landscape design include:

1. Natural Elements: Nature play spaces incorporate natural elements like rocks, logs, sand, water, plants, and materials, providing children with opportunities to interact with the natural environment.
2. Risk and Challenge: Nature play encourages managed risks and challenges, allowing children to develop problem-solving skills, confidence, and resilience. Climbing structures, uneven terrains, and balancing logs are typical elements that provide appropriate challenges.
3. Imaginative Play: Nature play spaces often have open-ended features that stimulate imaginative play. Children’s creativity can transform simple elements like loose parts, mud kitchens, and natural nooks into various play scenarios.
4. Sensory Stimulation: Natural materials engage children’s senses, fostering sensory exploration. The different textures, smells, and sounds of nature enhance sensory awareness and cognitive development.
5. Biodiversity: Early learning landscapes with a variety of plants and habitats introduce children to biodiversity and the interconnectedness of living things in the ecosystem.
6. Environmental Education: Nature play spaces can serve as outdoor classrooms where children learn about nature, wildlife, and ecological concepts through hands-on experiences.
7. Social Interaction: Nature play supports social development by encouraging collaborative and cooperative play. Children learn to share, negotiate, and communicate while engaging in unstructured play with their peers.
8. Environmental Stewardship: Exposure to nature from an early age fosters a sense of connection to the natural world and lays the foundation for environmental stewardship in the future.
9. Physical Development: Nature play spaces offer opportunities for gross motor development, balance, coordination, and physical activity through climbing, running, jumping, and exploring the outdoor environment.
10. Well-Being and Health: Being in nature promotes mental well-being, reduces stress, and contributes to the overall physical health of young children.

Our team understands that nature play spaces support holistic development and lay the groundwork for a lifelong connection to nature and the environment by providing a rich and diverse outdoor environment. If you’d like to know more about how we could bring more nature and play to your facility, talk to us.

As a Nature Play specialist, we manufacture custom-made play structures tailored to the early learning and primary school environment. Our designs are inspired by nature and use locally sourced sustainable timber, rock, sand, and rope. We ensure they seamlessly blend into each outdoor environment while offering safe and stimulating play opportunities, including:

Every element is thoughtfully designed to encourage exploration, imagination, and connection to the outdoors while adhering to local planning, accessibility, and independent safety auditors. As per nature, every structure is unique. They can be assembled and installed on-site individually or supplied as part of a more extensive early learning landscape design and construction project.