(Click on any of the images to start the slideshow.)
Risk and rope work
Why are opportunities for risk and adventure essential for normal development in the early years? Tim Gill (2007) identifies four arguments:
- helping children to learn how to manage risk (understanding safety)
- feeding children’s innate need for risk with reasonable risks in order to prevent them finding greater unmanaged risks for themselves
- health and developmental benefits
- the building of character and personality traits such as resilience and self-reliance
We are introducing rope work to develop all of the above. Can you see appropriate risk in the above photos? For some it is running on uneven surfaces. For others, it’s balancing and climbing. Throughout all their Forest school sessions, we try to encourage children to notice and assess risk for themselves and learn to trust themselves in taking appropriate risks and also not taking risks until they are ready to. And they can have fun whilst doing so.