OUTDOORS BRING SELF-AWARENESS, CREATIVITY AND PROBLEM SOLVING AMONG BOYS...........

"When children come into contact with NATURE, they reveal their strength".

Maria Montessori

Whenever I see kids in nature, I feel as though they are enjoying every bit of it and nobody is forcing them to  pay attention, engage, interact and involve but they are doing it on their own. That's the power of nature.

It all started with a Rainy day in Riyadh, that I found kids running out of their homes, apartments and doors, just to Play and play out. It tells us about the nature of man himself who notices every change in his surrounding which leads to curiosity, inquiry, and then discovery in the end.

Some boys started playing with the water itself, some chased each other, some ran after their sticky balls, some jumped trees, some traced their fingers on the newly formed mud, some were wondering at the sight of the changing color of  the trees, leaves, and sky because everything was fresher now.

Some decided to pick rocks, some jumping on the puddles, some started thinking what new play they could invent ........

I saw few youngsters on the tree house, trying to get to the top, communicating about the tree climbing tips, making new connections with their friends , helping each other, balancing their eye-hand control, getting the strength, exchanging new ideas about the relation of tree structure and tree houses. Once they got there, they started looking for new ways to climb faster and on that they talked many things which just opened up the window of new learning ....all unknowingly.

One of them looked around as if he was capturing the sounds, the rythm, the beauties of nature and analyzing it's relation with humans and solving the problems just aroused in the mind.I saw another boy on a branch of a tree, he found himself stuck up but he never gave up and continued trying out new possibilities. That's the power of nature which challenge young minds to come up with the most creative and workable plan.

 That boy was deeply immersed in the nature and became extremely curious, he showed amazing concentration level while in school he might be labelled as ADHD. Nature has the power to attract attention until the discovery is made by the child.

Another boy was running towards them,and I was amazed to see how he jumped to the tree realizing his potentials and strengths all just by interacting with the nature.

After sometime, the rain stopped and the weather was just beautiful enough that the boys decided to play there all evening.

 Few boys found a cardboard box at the backyard, so they started exploring it, looking at every possible corner and opening of the box. One of them shouted, "I got an idea, let's skate with this box".

Other replied," wow, let's make it a perfect one, and we will play with it".

So he ran into his house, brought the skate shoes, fixed it under the box and sat inside it just to discover how fantastic a cardboard could be. So they started the play, one pushing the other, and taking turns.


      Children love Free-play , it’s a way of grasping the new world, investigating new ideas, exploring the unleashed powers of the environment, examining the differences of facts and fictions, digging the strength of human potential. Play is the way a child enters into the world of reality although it seems that he exists in a fairytale world. It’s a process of natural transformation into an adult life. Let's give our children the opportunity to play, it's a real learning..... Boys need it too and they learn those life-skills through Outdoor- play which no school can teach and no teacher can even imagine of making such a lesson plan.