Unstructured Play in Nature

What is unstructured play?

Unstructured play is when children get to play with the freedom to create, explore, and discover without the restriction of predetermined rules. It is easier to engage in unstructured play in a natural environment because children are not bound by standard rules they must follow in school or in sports, for example. Making sandcastles, climbing trees, or even just dancing around in the woods are some ways your child can engage in unstructured play in natural environments.

Still not sure what unstructured play can entail? Watch this short clip on ForestPlay – Singapore’s first adventure nature playground!

Elaborated below are some benefits that your child can gain with unstructured play in nature.

Problem Solving The lack of predetermined solutions in unstructured nature play provides a great opportunity for children to explore the affordances of natural elements to solve their own problems. If a mud pie they were making was too watery, they will find out that they can add more soil to thicken it. They could also learn to build a wall of rocks to hold in their mud pie mixture. Anything can be a solution if they explore the affordances of natural elements around them.

Photo by Meg Loeks.

Creativity and Imagination Affordances not only exercise children’s problem-solving skills but also their creativity and imaginative skills as well. A rock is not just a rock. It could be Princess Space Rock or Lieutenant GarbleWarble. Without being bound by toys and their expected social roles, children can use these rocks in fun ways to create new social hierarchies for their imagined social roles. Who knows what they can think of!

Perseverance They also learn the virtue of perseverance. It is harder to stack and balance natural elements like rocks because of their imperfect shapes than it is with Lego pieces. With patience and perseverance, children will be encouraged to work harder to accomplish their challenging task of stacking rocks.

Photo taken from HandsOnAsWeGrow.

Social Initiative Unstructured play sets as a venue of a social initiative to explore and engage with other children. They can freely share ideas of fun activities they can all do together, creating new rules as they go along. They also learn how to cooperate, like who gets to gather stick or who gets to collect water. With more minds put together, the possibilities of unstructured play are endless.

Motor Skills From fine motor skills to large compound movements, unstructured play in nature helps children to develop and enhance their motor skills development. Building this fort requires strength, balance, and agility to maneuvre all these heavy logs.

The benefits of unstructured nature play are practically endless. Here is a list of possible unstructured play activities you could introduce to your child to let them try.