On Wednesday 11th March, the staff in St Clare's Abbey Nursery, P1 & P2 year groups were delighted to welcome Jan White a leading thinker and writer on outdoor play, to our school. This is an area of school life that we have been working on, most committedly, during the past three years and a lot of Jan's writing has inspired our work. We have been working closely with Early Years' Play Consultant Clare Devlin, and when Clare heard that Jan was coming to NI to lead an Early Education Conference in Stranmillis University College , she told her about all the outdoor work that we have been developing and Jan agreed to come for a visit. She spent the day with us, observing our practice across Nursery, P1 & P2 and she loved what she saw. She also posed some good questions which have given us food for thought and will contribute to the next stage of our development of outdoor play for our children.
We are fervent believers in the value that the 'outdoors' offers to our children and we look forward to many more years of working together, to give our children the very richest experiences possible.
