Some children love to climb. They shoot up climbing frames, trees and ladders. They scramble up things they shouldn't (like bookcases and gates) and go up the slide instead of down.
As babies and toddlers learn to navigate their world, they start to pull themselves up and climb over objects. Climbing is a form of risky play, but it is essential for children's physical development.
Preschool children may want to challenge themselves, to climb as high as the sky and be king of the castle. When early childhood educators support children's gross-motor skills and ability to climb safely, they are helping them to view their world from a new perspective.
NQS and EYLF learning outcomes
The National Quality Standard (NQS) requires childcare services to promote physical activity that is appropriate for each child (2.1.3).
The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) learning outcomes ask children to take increasing responsibility for their own physical learning, wellbeing (3.2), physical health and personal safety (3.3).
When children climb up rocks, ladders and other objects they are interacting with natural and processed materials (4.4).
Learning experiences
- Make a mountain from cushions and soft toys - climb it!
- Build a mountain in the sandpit. Can everyone help?
- Allow babies and toddlers supervised climbing on staircases.
- Ask children to design an obstacle course. Can they plan it, draw it, and build it as a team?
- Fold paper planes and fly them from a great height.
Learning environments
- Provide platforms of different heights so children can climb onto them.
- Arrange tree stumps or logs in a safe area for climbing and balancing activities. Offer raised stepping stones for babies and toddlers.
- Introduce rope structures or nets.
- Combine balance beams with climbing frames.
- Create a dirt mountain in your outdoor landscape, for children to climb and slide down.
- Create tactile climbing experiences by fixing textured materials to flat surfaces that children climb on.
Ladders and Anji Play
Anji Play, in China, is well-known for risky play and incorporating ladders into outdoor learning environments. Drs. Peter Mangione and Julie Nicholson write:
“Certain materials are commonly observed in outdoor environments in Anji including wooden step and straight ladders, wooden stilts, large and small wooden and colored blocks in a wide range of shapes and sizes, tires, ropes, and soft mats…”
“Teachers also want materials that allow children to create opportunities for risk taking in their play. This is common practice with children in Anji who build complex obstacle courses to run through, stand barrels up and stretch ladders between them to practice walking across, or tie ropes between trees so they can hang and swing high off the ground…”
“Children in the Anji kindergartens use minimally structured materials in transformative, meaningful ways. For example, as they create a play structure using ladders, large cylinders, sand bags, and other objects, they carefully put together the objects and test how stable their construction is. They make sure everything is lined up and properly supported. They make adjustments, often engaging in lively exchanges with each other about what they should do. They create complex symmetrical designs, applying numerical concepts, making comparisons, classifying objects, and making predictions. They continually explore spatial relationships.”
View YouTube videos of ladders in Anji Play: