09/26/2026
When young children spend time running, climbing, jumping, balancing, digging, carrying, and figuring out how their bodies work, they’re doing much more than getting their energy out.
They’re building the foundations for learning.
Active outdoor play gives children opportunities to strengthen coordination, body awareness, balance, spatial understanding, planning, attention, and confidence. It also gives them countless little challenges: How do I get up there? Can I make it across? What happens if I try it this way?
Those moments require children to make decisions, adjust their movements, manage frustration, take reasonable risks, and keep trying.
And those skills follow them right back into the classroom.
The ability to sit and focus doesn’t begin with sitting.
The ability to write doesn’t begin with a pencil.
The ability to regulate doesn’t begin with being told to calm down.
It begins with a body that has had plenty of opportunities to move, explore, stretch, balance, push, pull, climb, and discover what it can do.
That’s why movement is such an important part of our outdoor learning environment at First Pres. 🌱
We don’t see movement as a break from learning. We see it as one of the ways children learn.
