Reposted from Portland Family Magazine.
Author and clinical psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison writes, “Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.” It is through unstructured, open-ended creative play that children learn the ways of the world. While playing outside, children explore with all their senses, they witness new life, they create imaginary worlds and they negotiate with each other to create a playful environment.

1. Outdoor play is a multi-sensory activity. While outdoors, children will see, hear, smell and touch things unavailable to them when they play inside. They use their brains in unique ways as they come to understand these new stimuli.
2. Playing outside brings together informal play and formal learning. Children can incorporate concepts they have learned at school in a hands-on way while outdoors. For example, seeing and touching the roots of a tree will bring to life the lesson their teacher taught about how plants get their nutrients.
3. Playing outdoors stimulates creativity. Robin Moore, an expert in the design of play and learning environments, says, “Natural spaces and materials stimulate children’s limitless imagination and serve as the medium of inventiveness and creativity.” Rocks, stones and dirt present limitless opportunities for play that can be expressed differently every time a child steps outside.
4. Playing outdoors is open-ended. There is no instruction manual for outdoor play. Children make the rules and in doing so use their imagination, creativity, intelligence and negotiation skills in a unique way.
5. Playing in nature reduces anxiety. Time spent outside physiologically reduces anxiety. Children bring an open mind and a more relaxed outlook back inside when they are in more traditional learning environments.
6. Outdoor play increases attention span. Time spent in unstructured play outdoors is a natural attention builder. Often children who have difficulty with pen and paper tasks or sitting still for long periods of times are significantly more successful after time spent outside.
7. Outdoor play is imaginative. Because there are no labels, no pre-conceived ideas and no rules, children must create the world around them. In this type of play, children use their imagination in ways they don’t when playing inside.
8. Being in nature develops respect for other living things. Children develop empathy, the ability to consider other people’s feeling, by interacting with creatures in nature. Watching a tiny bug, a blue bird or a squirrel scurrying up a tree gives children the ability to learn and grow from others.
9. Outdoor play promotes problem solving. As children navigate a world in which they make the rules, they must learn to understand what works and what doesn’t, what lines of thinking bring success and failure, how to know when to keep trying and when to stop.
10. Playing outside promotes leadership skills. In an environment where children create the fun, natural leaders will arise. One child may excel at explaining how to play the game, while another may enjoy setting up the physical challenge of an outdoor obstacle course. All types of leadership skills are needed and encouraged.
11. Outdoor play widens vocabulary. While playing outdoors, children may see an acorn, a chipmunk and cumulous clouds. As they encounter new things, their vocabulary will expand in ways it never could indoors.
12. Playing outside improves listening skills. As children negotiate the rules of an invented game, they must listen closely to one another, ask questions for clarification and attend to the details of explanations in ways they don’t have to when playing familiar games.
13. Being in nature improves communication skills. Unclear about the rules in an invented game? Not sure how to climb the tree or create the fairy house? Children must learn to question and clarify for understanding while simultaneously making themselves understood.
14. Outdoor play encourages cooperative play. In a setting where there aren’t clear winners and losers, children work together to meet a goal. Perhaps they complete a self-made obstacle course or create a house for a chipmunk. Together they compromise and work together to meet a desired outcome.
15. Time in nature helps children to notice patterns. The natural world is full of patterns. The petals on flowers, the veins of a leaf, the bark on a tree are all patterns. Pattern building is a crucial early math skill.
16. Playing outdoors helps children to notice similarities and differences. The ability to sort items and notice the similarities and differences in them is yet another skill crucial to mathematical success. Time outdoors affords many opportunities for sorting.
17. Time spent outdoors improves children’s immune systems. Healthy children are stronger learners. As children spend more and more time outdoors, their immune systems improve, decreasing time out of school for illness.
18. Outdoor play increases children’s physical activity level. Children who play outdoors are less likely to be obese and more likely to be active learners. Children who move and play when out of school are ready for the attention often needed for classroom learning.
19. Time spent outdoors increases persistence. Outdoor games often require persistence. Children must try and try again if their experiment fails. If the branch doesn’t reach all the way across the stream or the bark doesn’t cover their fairy house, they must keep trying until they are successful.
20. Outdoor play is fun. Children who are happy are successful learners. Children are naturally happy when they are moving, playing and creating outside. This joy opens them up for experimenting, learning and growing.

Forest bathing or Shinrin-yoku refers to time spent walking in forests. In Japan the practice has been studied by forestry, agriculture and health officials. The rest of the world is now catching on to the idea that rather than being a nice-to-have feature, urban forests are vital to balance the health effects of modern life.

In the UK some cities are blessed with urban parks with mature trees. However, some communities lack mature trees, some have decided to remove tall trees due to various pressures, some people like visiting forests but don't feel the need to have them near their home. Perhaps that situation is about to change.

We know that an active lifestyle is necessary for health and well-being. 20-30 minutes walking 5 times per week maintains our mental alertness, blood pressure, body fat ratio and overall stress levels (a leading cause of cancers) at manageable levels. New findings have discovered that walking in forests is even better for us than just going to the gym or taking a stroll down a local pathway. 

Walking in forests (shinrin-yoku) may prevent the onset of chronic illnesses like cancers, reduce blood pressure, heart rate and stress hormones (which may have a preventive effect on hypertension).  It is also credited with creating calming psychological effects through changes observed in parasympathetic and sympathetic nerves. 

Forest bathing appears to increase the level of serum adiponectin--a hormone that in lower concentrations is associated with obesity, type 2 DM (diabetes mellitus), cardiovascular disease, and metabolic syndrome, among other metabolic disorders. A combined study found shinrin-yoku reduces anxiety, depression, anger, fatigue and feelings of emotional confusion.

By developing urban forests we create an oasis in the city, somewhere we can actively balance the indoor air pollution of modern buildings, the information overload and the stress and pressures of the modern world. Sustainable urban planning requires us to include more trees in the urban setting. To mitigate climate change we need more long-lived trees to sequester carbon. Rather than being a nice-to-have feature, urban forests are vital for a cost effective public health system.

Read the full article here

I found this article on the Grand Designs website and thought it might be of interest -

"When it comes to green living, the Germans are light years ahead of us Brits. Slowly, like toddlers being dragged to the doctor, the UK is moving towards more energy- efficient homes, while Germany swallowed its medicine long ago. The latter has fabulous incentives for green home improvements, to say nothing of its support for renewables. Compare this to grubby old Blighty, where millions don't even have decent insulation.

But this means we can learn a lot from the German experience of what it's like to live in an eco-friendly building. So once we ‘power down' our homes and sort out energy leakage, what next?

One issue that has emerged in Germany is the effect on human well-being of the buildings we live in. They even have a term for the study of it, Bau-biologie or building biology. Ironically, its roots lie in the improved efficiency of modern construction - as homes become more airtight, they deny their inhabitants fresh air and increase exposure to toxins in the building's fabric. Such thinking has been used to explain the emergence of Sick Building Syndrome, various allergenic reactions and recent increases in asthma and respiratory diseases.

The result is to emphasise ‘healthy' construction, a home that is good for you as well as the environment. ‘The movement towards healthy building started about 30 years ago in Germany,' says Oliver Rehm, managing director of design-build company Baufritz.

It is safe to say the public has some appreciation of potential problems from humidity, harmful chemicals and lack of fresh air. In the UK, there is also a growing awareness of chemical pollutants that might find their way into the home - from harmful gases in paint known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), to flame retardants in furnishings.

Baufritz's answer to humidity, toxins and lack of oxygen is to design homes with a breathable skin, a modern equivalent to dealing with moisture that stretches back centuries, and mechanically controlled windows that open and close according to the internal air quality, or a central ventilation system.

Rehm talks of the human body being affected by ‘electrostress' from overhead telegraph cables, mobile phone masts, power stations, digital telephones, wireless networks, electricity cables, microwave ovens and so on. As a result, Baufritz fits a ‘XUND-E plate' to the outside of its buildings, comprising thin layers of carbon on a natural gypsum board. This, says Baufritz, cuts out up to 99 per cent of all high-frequency radiation and low-frequency static emissions. Inside meanwhile, great care is placed on the siting of electrical circuits, avoiding sleeping areas, for example, in order to reduce exposure to potential harm.

The Building Research Establishment (BRE) says it is keen to do more research into the idea of a healthy home - after all, we spend much of our time inside our homes - and that it is not aware of any body of information on the subject. To this end, the Prince's Foundation is currently building a state-of-the-art house from natural materials at the BRE's Innovation Park near Watford, the site for a handful of show homes demonstrating the latest ideas in sustainable living. ‘Research will examine the impact of natural materials on air quality, on allergy resistance and on general sense of well-being,' says the BRE. "

If you have been to see the natural house at the BRE's Innovation Park near Watford, please let us know your thoughts.