Save the date! The 2023 Breath of Fresh Air Summit will be held from September 27-29th, 2023 in Wesley Clover Parks, Ottawa, ON! Just one year away! Led by Outdoor Play Canada, Breath of Fresh Air is a two-day Outdoor Play Summit where thought leaders, practitioners, researchers, and policy makers can connect and share best practices. The...
Thank you to Dr. Shawnda Morrison, Assistant Professor and Scientist, Faculty of Sport at the University of Ljubljana, for providing this post. Record levels of obesity and physical inactivity among children mean they are set to bear the brunt of poorer health effects from rising global temperatures – that’s the stark warning in a new comprehensive...
Thank you to Dr. Avril Johnstone, Dr. Anne Martin, and Dr. Paul McCrorie, from the Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Scotland, for providing this post. What is nature-based early childhood education and why is it important? "I like being outside with my friends, I like all the colours outside and all the space....
Thank you to Rachel Ramsden, PhD student at the School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, for providing this post. Summer weather encourages many of us outdoors and, as we saw during the COVID pandemic, being outside brings us many benefits – to our health and wellbeing. The research in our lab focuses...
Thank you for Dr. Hilary Caldwell, Dr. Sara Kirk, Mike Arthus and Dr. Camille Hancock Friesen from the Healthy Populations Institute, Dalhousie University, for providing this post. This blog post was originally published in SaltWire. Nova Scotia is Canada’s Ocean Playground. Our ocean playground is one of the many reasons Nova Scotians, and Canadians, love this coastal...
Thank you to Dr. Eun-Young Lee (Assistant Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, Queen's University) and Dr. Louise de Lannoy (Research Manager for Outdoor Play Canada) for providing this post. A team of 67 educators, practitioners, and researchers from across the globe recently published a consensus project on the terminology, taxonomy, and ontology...
The Parks Accessibility Conference runs virtually from August 23-25, 2022 and is free to attend! Led by Engineering Health at the KITE (Knowledge Innovation Talent Everywhere) Research Institute, the conference will bring together those with a desire to improve accessibility at national parks in Canada. Conference themes surround three main questions: What does National Park accessibility...
May 24th, 2022 1-2:15pm ET The 17th UNICEF Report Card on Child and Youth Well-being will be launched with a focus this year on children's environment. For the past two decades the UNICEF Report Cards have examined the state of children and youth's wellbeing across high-income countries providing comparisons and rankings for each country based...
Join Okanagan College on May 16th, in collaboration with Bow Valley College, Saskatchewan Polytechnic and New Brunswick Community College, and colleagues at the YMCA and University of Fraser Valley, for a virtual conference called Outdoor Pedagogy: Change makers from diverse perspectives. The full day virtual conference features keynote speaker Dr. Rebecca Isbell, acclaimed ECE author of...
Thank you to Sylvie Melsbach, partnerships and outdoor play lead at the Regroupement des centres de la petite enfance de la Monteregie, for providing this post. The "Poupons et trottineurs ouverts vers le monde extérieur : Creating Optimal Outdoor Spaces for Infants and Toddlers in Early Learning and Child Care" project is based on the premise that...
