Outdoor Play
Our Outdoor Play Strategy is built on the scientific evidence base that establishes outdoor play, with its risks, as essential to healthy child development.
While play may be perceived as simply fun for kids, it is a whole lot more. Outdoor play supports multiple developmental benefits: healthier, more active children; self-regulation and resilience; social skills through interacting and negotiating with others; and, learning through play. Given the critical importance to development, children from all social, ethnic and economic backgrounds require play-rich opportunities in the outdoors.
But children’s experiences in the world are increasingly structured, technology-based, and divorced from nature. We are missing a healthy balance between letting kids explore and take risks and taking reasonable measures to keep them safe. A growing outdoor play sector in Canada seeks to increase opportunities for outdoor play in all settings. We have learned the importance of working with multiple sectors and stakeholders in order to create opportunities for outdoor play in distinct settings. As we move forward, we are focusing our multi-sector approach to benefit children’s outdoor play in early childhood education programs. Through our funding, we support adult education, training, and policy development to increase children’s opportunities for outdoor play. We convene our grantees to support sharing and learning, and we use robust evaluation and knowledge mobilization to measure and leverage our results.
Outdoor Play Strategy: A Phased Approach
Building adult capacity in Early Learning and Child Care
Exploring a focus on early childhood education.
Exploring outdoor play as an essential element to supporting the healthy development of children and youth.
Understand our Impact
Access information about our granting history and the projects that we fund in our Grants Navigator.
Staff Contact
Christine Alden
Our Areas of Focus
Related News and Updates
Advancing Outdoor Play in Early Learning: The Power of a Relational, Values-Driven Approach to Building Adult Capacity
The Lawson Foundation is proud to announce the release of "The Power of a Relational, Values-Driven Approach to Building Adult Capacity: Final Evaluation Report of Outdoor Play Strategy 2.0." a comprehensive evaluation highlighting the significant strides made in...
Transforming Post-Secondary Early Childhood Education in Canada with Outdoor and Land-based Teaching and Learning
The Lawson Foundation has released a new report, "More Than a New Course: A Framework for Embedding Outdoor and Land-based Pedagogies in Post-Secondary ECE Programs." (French Translation available here). The report provides guidelines to help integrate Outdoor and...
Outdoor Play Milestone : Canadian Pediatric Society’s position statement on outdoor risky play
The Canadian Pediatric Society just released a position statement on the importance of outdoor risky play! https://ow.ly/xgfB50QuTmm “Risk is inherent to free play. When children play spontaneously, they may choose to push boundaries and test limits. Risky play...
Report | Funding for Outdoor Play in Canada
"Funding for Outdoor Play in Canada" supports funders and grant seekers in finding common ground and building partnerships to advance the multiple issue areas that overlap with outdoor play July 29, 2021 - A new report from The Lawson Foundation and Outdoor Play...
Article | Why the outdoors should be an integral part of every early learning and child-care program
Our program director, Christine Alden, put pen to paper to make the case on why the outdoors should be an integral part of every early learning and child care program. She explains outdoor learning and its benefits to kids’ development and provides some policy...
Outdoor early learning helps kids. Provinces should do more to support it
Check out our latest update on early learning and childcare in First Policy Response, "Outdoor early learning helps kids. Provinces should do more to support it," by our very own Christine and Kayla Ritchie, and Frank Welsh. From the article: "We reiterate our call to...