What are Schoolchildren doing Out There? Children’s Perspectives on Aff ordances in Unedited Places

In many contexts, children have limited access to outdoor environments with natural features in their daily lives, while outdoor settings for children tend to be designed by adults, from an adult perspective. The aim of the study is to explore what schoolchildren do in outdoor settings with natural features, and to gain a better understanding of what these places mean to them. The data were collected using children’s photographs and individual walk-and-talk conversations with seventeen schoolchildren aged 8 to 9 in four Swedish after-school educare settings. The analysis used the concept of ‘affordances’ to describe both the significance of physical features in the places and the use that the children made of these features. Findings suggest that the outdoor places with natural features that had not been ‘edited’ by adults to serve predetermined purposes offered space for exploration, imagination and free play. The places offered immersive experiences with all senses, as well as physical activity, social interaction, time to be alone, and opportunities for the children to invent their own activities.