A simple rolling presentation full of great quotes and inspiring images about outdoor learning in schools. Ideal to start an INSET or sharing event with colleagues or parents. Quotes from across UK including DfE / National Curriculum in England and Wales and CfE in Scotland.

1. Let them look at the mountains and the stars up above.
Let them look at the beauty of the waters and the trees and
flowers on earth.
Then they will begin to think,
and to think is the beginning of real education.
David Polis

2. Education is a natural process carried out by the child –
and is not acquired by listening to words, but by
experiences in the environment
Maria Montessori

3. Children cannot bounce off the walls if we take
away the walls.
Erin Kenny

4. Children should be kept as safe as needed,
not as safe as possible.
Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents

6. If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the
juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his
actions, "This sucks. I'm going to do my own thing.”
Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia

7. A mind that is stretched by a new experience can
never go back to its old dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

9. It is the way that those children in the class who are
left out of things shine on the trips.
They become leaders or use their physical skills and
confidence.
The respect they get from this, means they are
included and valued afterwards.
Year 5 teacher, South Hetton partnership

10. Risk is essential. There is no growth or
inspiration in staying within what is safe
and comfortable.
Alex Noble

11. Good Learning Outside the Classroom must be about raising
achievement through an organised and powerful approach to learning
in which direct experience is at the heart of the learning. When
properly integrated into schools and children's services, it can help
significantly in achieving better outcomes for all children and young
people "
Lindsay Newton, Association of Directors of Children Services (ADCS)

12. Outdoor learning can
benefit pupils of all ages.
It enriches the curriculum
and can improve
classroom attainment
House of Commons Education and
Skills Committee

13. "We looked at whether
school children’s learning
about their local
environment would
influence the way they
treat it….
…It shows the potential for
schools trips not just to
change individual lives, but
the lives of whole
communities. “
House of Commons Education and Skills Committee

14. We must challenge people to think,
"Why learn indoors? "
Robert Brown MSP, Deputy Minister for Education and Young People

15. A creative playground is only half a creative space;
it’s also a creative attitude.
And we’re changing attitudes
as much as we’re changing spaces.
Jay Beckwith,
1973

16. Learning outside the classroom is not
some optional extra.
Trips and getting out of the classroom
should be part and parcel of school life
Ed Balls, MP

17. We are part of nature
and as we destroy
nature we destroy
ourselves. It is a
selfish thing to want
to protect nature.
Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia clothing

20. Well planned and
well constructed
outdoor learning
helps develop the
skills of enquiry,
critical thinking
and reflection.
Curriculum for Excellence

21. In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments—
there are consequences.
- R. G. Ingersoll

22. It seems to me that we all look at Nature
too much, and live with her too little.
Oscar Wilde

23. More than two thirds of secondary students felt they had
a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses,
had developed their listening skills,
had more confidence in explaining things to others,
felt more able to join in discussions at school.
Evaluation of Learning Away Project

24. When one tugs at a single thing in
nature, he finds it attached to the rest
of the world.
John Muir

27. Creativity becomes more visible when adults try to
be more attentive to the cognitive process of
children than to the results their achieve in various
fields of doing and understanding.
Loris Malaguzzi

29. Take calculated risks.
That is quite different from
being rash.
General George Patton

30. Rivers and rocks and trees have always
been talking to us, but we've forgotten
how to listen.
- Michael Roads

31. You can discover more about a person in
an hour of play than a year of conversation.
Plato

34. …a residential learning experience provides
opportunities and benefits/impacts that cannot
be achieved in any other educational context or
setting.
Learning Away
Final Evaluation Report

36. The best classroom and the richest
cupboard is roofed only by the sky.
Margaret McMillan

39. The biggest risk is
not taking any risk...
In a world that
changing really
quickly, the only
strategy that is
guaranteed to fail is
not taking risks.
Mark Zuckerberg

41. Play allows us to develop alternative to
violence and despair. It helps us learn
perseverance and gain optimism.
Dr Stuart Brown

43. Nature presents the young with something so
much greater than they are - it offers an
environment where they can easily
contemplate infinity and eternity.
Richard Louv

50. Necessity may be the mother of invention,
but play certainly is the father.
Roger Van Vech

52. Play acts as a
forward feed
mechanism into
courageous,
creative, rigorous
thinking in
adulthood
Tina Bruces

55. …don't take 'play' to mean anything idle, wasteful or
frivolous.
This is 'play' as the great philosophers understood it:
the experience of being an active, creative and fully
autonomous person.
Pat Kane

56. ….in education residentials are, almost without
exception, the gift that keeps on giving.
Prof. David Hopkins, Executive Director of Adventure Learning Schools

57. Outdoor learning
improved mental
health, particularly
for children suffering
mental distress, low
self-perceived social
and personal skill
Roger Scrutton, Outdoor adventure
education for children in Scotland