We at Outdoor Play Canada, in collaboration with the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group at the CHEO Research Institute, Andrew Fleck Children’s Services, and Algonquin College, are launching the Canadian Centre for Outdoor Play (CCOP), a centre of excellence and demonstration site in outdoor play. The CCOP will have a licensed nature-based early childhood education (ECE) program as its foundation (opening in the fall of 2023!), from which continuous learning opportunities, applied research, and policy development in outdoor play and learning will emerge and bloom.

Among our major projects for the CCOP is to develop a nationally agreed-upon outdoor ECE framework. The idea behind this, is that many outdoor ECE continuous learning opportunities already exist in Canada. But few of them speak to each other, and moreover, because of the way ECE is controlled provincially, there is no national oversight on key practices of this type of continuous learning. This is what we are aiming to do. Bring together those already doing this good work, learn from them, identify what they perceive as key practices in outdoor ECE continuous learning, and put this all together as a framework, so that those who are looking to create or update their continuous learning offerings have an evidence-informed framework to guide their offerings, and those that already meet the framework can proudly showcase this and feel confident in their offerings.

Join us in this conversation by completing our (5-10min, max!) survey! The purpose of this survey is to initiate a conversation with outdoor-focused educators on what they see as important outdoor pedagogical practices in continuous learning, to help shape our outdoor ECE framework.

Complete the survey here.

Please feel free to contact Louise de Lannoy (info@outdoorplaycanada.ca), if you have any questions about the survey. Your assistance with completing this survey is greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time and consideration!