Infants learn about the world through their senses - touch, sight, sound, taste, and smell.  Creating safe, diverse and developmentally appropriate outdoor leaning environments can offer benefits across curriculum and developmental areas.

The key to creating positive experiences in outdoor learning environments lies not only in the physical environment but with the modeling and behavior of caregivers.  Just as infants learn about relationships from how people touch/hold them and from the tones of voice or facial expressions, this is also how they learn about their relationship to the natural world around them.

Early sense of trust is not limited to having basic needs met, but also feeling safe in a variety of environments.  As a caregiver, you have the opportunity to help infants form positive relationships with both humans and the natural world.  Creating safe outdoor learning environments that offer infants and toddlers the opportunity to explore and experiment with the natural world must be combined with caregivers who are willing and able to let children interact with their environment and model that interaction themselves.

Infants and toddlers are often thought as “too young” to be involved in gardening, but can be engaged through watering, harvesting, digging, and exploring worms, insects and birds.  The best way to help these ages benefit from a garden experience is through their senses.

Sensory Garden Components and Ideas

Interactivity - Design sensory gardens to encourage interaction with the environment.

• Sitting, standing and climbing areas may include benches, logs, platforms, and bridges.  Most interaction with a garden will happen at ground level, but a secondary level offers older infants and toddlers opportunity to “pull up” and explore.
• Create opportunities for children to move through the garden- being “in” the garden is more engaging than looking “at” one.
• Consider a variety of places for the infants and toddlers to walk and move.  Paths and defined areas may have different types of surfaces, sand, flagstone, wood chips, etc, as well as a variety of inclines, steps, etc.
• Include a sand box and/or a designated “dirt digging spot” in a shaded area.

Sight - Color, shape, visual texture, movement, light and shadow.  When planning year- round sensory experiences for children incorporate colors, shapes, light and special features throughout the year.

• Plant flowers of varying colors, that may bloom different times of year.
• Include red-leafed, soft, grey foliaged and variegated plant varieties.
• Make use of contrast, such as clustering plants of different shapes, sizes and colors.
• Consider planting long grasses or ‘weeping’ tree varieties that will move in a breeze.
• Include plants and features that appeal to butterflies, such as herbs or flowering trees and shrubs.
• Use trees and plants to screen visually unappealing areas.
• Choose trees and shrubs that attract bird life (you can include a bird feeder on a branch) and that change their foliage in autumn.
• Consider the view from inside the classroom, and include interesting plants, flowers, or birdfeeders that children can see from the windows.
• Potted plants don’t have to be confined to traditional pots. Be creative and use items such as old shoes, a wheelbarrow, or playground equipment.
• Integrated mobiles, mirrors or sculpture into outdoor environments

Sound - Many sounds in a sensory garden don’t need planning, such as the sound of wind rushing through the leaves, rustling grasses or singing birds.  But to enhance the variety of sounds you may include:

• Dripping or trickling water
• Wind chimes (homemade or store bought)
• Encourage birds into your garden with a birdbath, nectar or non-toxic berry producing trees and plants.
• Quiet places (sometimes sounds are too overwhelming)

Touch - Think texture:

• Include soft flowers, fuzzy leaves, springy moss, rough bark, succulent leaves, and prickly seed pods.
• Choose hardy varieties of plants that can cope with handling. Place delicate flowers and plants in hard-to-reach places.
• Place plants and trees close to walkways, so children walking along the path may be brushed by foliage.
• Don’t lop low-hanging tree branches unless they are a safety hazard.
• Some species offer a variety of textures within a single plant, such as a southern magnolia, with its leaves slick, shiny, and dark green above, and soft, felted brown beneath.
• Intersperse rocks, wood, fabric or toys of different sized, shaped and textures.

Smell - Smells do not just have to come from blooming flowers.  When planning a sensory garden for infants and toddlers, think about both strong and subtle smells that they may explore directly or indirectly.

• Plant flowers with subtle smells that require you to stick your nose into the petals, such as violets.
• Consider planting a non-slip creeper or herb on or near a path so that, when you walk on the plant, it will release a beautiful aroma – for example, thyme or mint.
• Don’t clump too many aromatic plants in the one area, as the confusion of different scents will be overwhelming. Space scented plants at intervals around your garden.
• Choose plants that are pollinated by birds or insects rather than plants that release their seeds into the air. This will help any children who suffer from hay fever or asthma.
• Introduce fresh mulches, wood shavings, grass clippings, etc. which may have new scents.

Taste- One of my favorite senses.  Everything in an infant and toddler garden should be edible, or at least non-toxic.

• Consider buying small fruit trees for your garden.
• Edible flowers are not only beautiful, but safe plants for the playground
• Grow veggies and herbs in your school yard and use them in cooking or sensory experiences in the classroom.
• Early introduction to fresh, healthy foods will have an important impact as children begin making their own food choices.

Where to get help? - For more resources on sensory gardens for infants and toddlers contact:

• Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project
• NC Cooperative Extension
• NC Arboretum
• Garden nurseries

Sources of information:

1. Better Health Channel:  Gardens for the Senses

http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Gardens_for_the_senses?Open

2. Discovery Gardens – Designing for Development

http://www.mindspring.com/~discoverygardens/design/cdevelop/child1.html#design#design

3. The Learning Patterns and Needs of Infant and Toddlers: A Teaching Guide

Developed by, Karen DeBord, Ph.D.
Professor and Child Development Specialist, NCSU
1999
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/fcs/pdfs/InfTod.pdf

4. Sensory Gardens

Eva C. Worden and Kimberly A.. Moore
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/EP117