When you think back to your happiest memories as a child, most of us will think to experiences we’ve had outdoors. Children get a sense of calmness about being outside in an environment with no physical boundaries where they can breath in the fresh air. We haven’t got woodland here in Dubai but we have the desert and the beach. We can find shells and starfish and do some imaginative play with sand. Among the children at Kings’, creating a desert camp is a favourite activity. We teach them about fire safety and how to start a campfire. They are fascinated and a bit scared at the same time! We teach them how to act responsibly outdoors, like how they should hand matches to a grown up if they find them. We make popcorn over the campfire, which teaches them about the process of what happens when corn gets hot.
In Dubai, we’re even used to someone else doing the gardening so kids can benefit a lot from getting their hands dirty by digging up weeds and planting boxes with seeds and watching them grow. It educates them about food and where it comes from. Plus, they are much more likely to try certain fruit and vegetables if they’ve grown them.
When children first come to Kings’, we do a lot of outdoor activities such as picking up sticks and tying them with string to teach them how to tie a knot. It’s amazing how excited children can get about finding something under a tree and the many ways they can use something simply like a stick, as a wand, a walking stick or a pen. It inspires them to use their imagination.
It’s about having the resources and delivering a mindset for it. Parents can sometimes be worried that forest schooling activities can be messy, for instance, but we explain that it’s not unhygienic. It’s a shame that kids don't get access to things like mud and worms in Dubai but there are so many other things to explore and it’s important that they do so. When the children find an insect outside, for instance, they get crazy excited over it. Many kids in Dubai don't have pets as it’s such a transient place, so we don’t get these basic childhood experiences we’d usually take for granted.
Parents often say that they want to go back to the UK so their kids can experience nature but you can transfer the experience here. We often create our own puddles at school for instance, so the children can go puddle jumping. We had some heavy fog recently, so we took the opportunity to learn more about different weather conditions.
At home, you can create a wooden treasure basket with lots of natural materials with a wooden pastry brush, leaves and dry fruit shells There’s also lots of items you can pick up cheaply from places such as Daiso. Cut a loofah sponge in half for something that has an interesting texture that changes when it’s dry or wet.
