News

Nature play: benefits for children and families

July 14, 2025

By Britney Stark

Guest blogger Britney Stark is an office and administrative specialist at the University of Minnesota’s Child Development Laboratory School. An experienced early childhood and parent educator, she explains how time in nature helps children gain skills and confidence—and improves well-being for both children and adults.

Many of us find that to understand the benefits of time spent outdoors, we need only step outside for 20 minutes and then notice the difference in how we feel in our body and mind. Increasingly, research evidence shows the same thing: getting outside is good for us! In fact, time spent in nature may be especially beneficial for children as they develop physically, cognitively, emotionally, and socially (Kuo et al., 2019).

Scholar Louise Chawla found that most adults who have a deep connection to nature attribute this to a formative experience early in life, when they were given time and space to “mess around” in nature (personal interview, 2023). Take a few moments to remember: was there a special place or activity you loved as a child? Is there a smell or sound that brings you back to a moment in childhood? What feelings arise when you think of moments like these?

Why spend time in nature?

Let’s look at how getting outside affects several aspects of children’s development and well-being: physical development, mental health, cognitive development, and executive function.

Physical development

We live in a time where adults do all they can to protect children from harm. We worry about injury and “stranger danger.” We hope that our children will have an easier experience than we had growing up. But when we remove all barriers and challenges, our children don’t get the opportunity to evaluate new situations for themselves or practice skills in a relatively safe environment. When we work too hard to protect them, they don’t get the opportunity to fail, step back, and try again.

On the other hand, when we give children space and time to explore, try new things, and make mistakes, they learn what they are capable of—and they develop the perseverance to expand their capabilities (Kuo et al., 2019). It’s okay if they get a few bumps and bruises along the way.

An outdoor setting is the perfect environment for children to explore and experiment. It encourages “vigorous, physical play,” and children tend to play for longer outdoors. Because of this, outdoor play directly improves children’s physical health and development.

It strengthens their hearts, lungs, and muscles
It strengthens their immune systems
Exposure to sunlight improves eyesight, helps children get enough vitamin D, and even improves their sleep (Head Start, 2019)
Children gain awareness of their abilities when assessing new situations
Children improve their balance and coordination (Chawla, 2015)

A woman and child walk on a sidewalk among trees and bushes — Photo by Sue Zeng on Unsplash

Mental health and cognitive development

A 2022 study analyzed the results of 34 scientific papers on nature and children’s cognitive development and mental health. Nearly all of the papers showed a connection between exposure to green spaces and improved cognitive development and mental health (Luque-García et al., 2022). From a mental health standpoint, research has found that time in nature:

Reduces stress
Lowers the risk of depression and anxiety
Fosters deep connections with others—and with nature itself, which in turn increases our happiness (Weir, 2020)
Encourages children to engage in more imaginative, constructive, sensory, and socially cooperative play (Chawla, 2015)

The evidence also points to cognitive benefits like an increased ability to focus and even milder symptoms for children diagnosed with ADHD (Chalwa, 2015, Head Start, 2019). In fact, one study found that for children with ADHD, a 20-minute walk in a park improved their concentration about as well as a common ADHD medication (Taylor et al., 2009).

Time in nature is not leisure time, it’s an essential investment in our children’s health (and also, by the way, in our own).
Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods

When children play outside, it’s easy to overlook the rich learning that’s taking place (Kiewra et al., 2016). It’s important for us adults to slow down and give children the time and space to just be, to wonder, to follow their interests, and to make discoveries. Environmental educator Ken Finch writes:

Young children’s minds are stimulated by nearly everything around them, so the more diverse, dynamic, and engaging their surroundings, the more the mind learns and grows. Natural areas are the perfect expression of this cognitive richness—far beyond what even the best, most elaborate indoor classrooms can provide. Consider some of the cognitive processes routinely at work in a natural play space: observation, concentration, exploration, collecting, sorting, experimenting, and building. These are not perceived by the kids as “learning,” of course; to the children they are just play! Yet they powerfully stimulate the mind and lay the core foundations for academic learning. As a bonus, natural areas change each day, and the more familiar the kids are with the site, the more they will notice those constant changes. So every tomorrow can bring a new array of stimuli! (Finch, 2015)

Executive function

Executive function has been compared to the air traffic control system for our brain. Our executive function skills help us focus, exercise self-control, make a plan, adjust to changes, and manage multiple tasks at once. In the late 80s and 90s, psychology professors Rachel and Stephen Kaplan came up with “attention restoration theory.” Their idea is that when we become mentally fatigued, spending time in natural environments “restores” our ability to focus.

Further research lends support to this theory. A 2022 study of preschoolers in northern Minnesota found that nature play was a great way for them to work on executive function skills. The study sorted preschools into three groups according to whether they had a “high,” “medium,” or “low” level of nature-based learning. In other words, the researchers grouped the schools based on how much time children spent either in nature or learning about nature. Interestingly, the researchers found that the children in the medium-level programs made just as much progress on executive function as the children in the high-level programs. Children in the low-level programs did not make as much progress as the others (Ernst et al., 2022). This suggests that it’s important to incorporate some nature-based practices into our day, but we don’t have to spend our whole school day outside. (Unless, of course, we want to!)

While it would be wonderful if we could step out of our school into a forest, prairie, or lakeside, we don’t need to be in the wilderness to experience nature. A 2019 study found that spending at least 120 minutes per week outside can significantly increase health and psychological well-being (White et al., 2019). That breaks down to just under 20 minutes a day to start getting those benefits! And we can do so in urban green spaces like parks, schoolyards, community gardens, or even boulevards.

Experiencing nature with children doesn’t have to be complicated. My biggest tip for educators and caregivers is this: take it outside. Anything you can do inside, you can do outside, including things like:

Reading
Art
Listening to or playing music
Building
Cooking or sharing a meal

There’s no better time than summer to start incorporating more outdoor play into your day. How will you bring nature into your next interaction with the children in your life?

References

Chawla, L. (2015). Benefits of Nature Contact for Children. Journal of Planning Literature, 30(4), 433-452. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412215595441

Ernst, J., Sobel, D., & Neil, A. (2022). Executive function in early childhood: Harnessing the potential of nature-based practices to elevate and equalize outcomes. Frontiers in Education 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.1011912

Head Start. (2019, December 2). Going outside improves children’s health. Headstart.gov. https://headstart.gov/learning-environments/supporting-outdoor-play-exploration-infants-toddlers/going-outside-improves-childrens-health

Finch, K. (2015). The risks and benefits of outdoor play. In D. Sobel (Ed.), Nature Preschools and Forest Kindergartens : The Handbook for Outdoor Learning. Redleaf Press.

Kiewra, C. & Veselack, E. (2016) Playing with nature: Supporting preschoolers’ creativity in natural outdoor classrooms. International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education, 4(1). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1120194

Kuo, M., Barnes, M., & Jordan, C. (2019). Do experiences with nature promote learning? Converging evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship. Frontiers in Psychology, 10(305). doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00305

Luque-García, L., Corrales, A., Lertxundi, A., Díaz, S., & Ibarluzea, J. (2022). Does exposure to greenness improve children's neuropsychological development and mental health? A Navigation Guide systematic review of observational evidence for associations. Environmental Research, 206 (112599). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.112599

Taylor, A. F., & Kuo, F. E. (2009). Children with attention deficits concentrate better after walk in the park. Journal of attention disorders, 12(5), 402–409. https://doi.org/10.1177/1087054708323000

Weir, K. (2020). Nurtured by nature: Psychological research is advancing our understanding of how time in nature can improve our mental health and sharpen our cognition. Monitor on Psychology, 51(3). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2020/04/nurtured-nature

White, M.P., Alcock, I., Grellier, J., et al. (2019). Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing. Scientific Reports, 9(7730). doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44097-3