Build Up San Mateo County, Build Up California, and the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) released their new project, Making Space: Connecting Children with Nature Through Thoughtful Facilities Design at the July National Children Facilities Network (NCFN) members meeting. The group wrote a report highlighting the connection between outdoor play space, child care facilities, and children’s feelings toward nature, and created two supplemental videos— the first on Family Connections in San Francisco, and the second on All Five in Menlo Park, as well as a teaser video. Both centers were recipients of LIIF grants to redo their outdoor space, and thus the teachers were able to provide comparisons with the children before and after redoing their outdoor space. 

The report found that exposure to nature supports healthy development, access to nature is not distributed equally across all children, and children’s connection to nature is weakening right now. BIPOC communities also tend to live in areas with disproportionately higher temperatures and poorer air quality and are much likelier to live on heat islands, urbanized areas that experience higher temperatures than neighboring areas due to lack of tree coverage and proximity to heavy industry. Looking ahead, it asked, how can facilities be designed to foster environmentally conscious children, mitigate the effects of climate change, and restore children’s connection to nature? 

In the video on All Five, Carol Thompson of All Five mentioned how many students live in apartments with very limited, if any, outdoor space, and that the children love getting the chance to run and move around outside more. Furthermore, Yensing Sihapanya, executive director of Family Connections stated in the video on Family Connections that after Covid-19, the children were a lot more timid and scared but the outdoor space has opened them up and helped the children to be more explorative, creative, and collaborative, reduced stress, and improved cognitive and motor skills. 

Build Up’s Work on Making Space connects to their work on climate action, including drafting an Early Childhood Climate Action Plan for San Mateo County. This draft is based on the U.S. Early Years Climate Action Plan (“EYCAP”)  from the Early Years Climate Action Task Force. With the intention to develop a version of the EYCAP for San Mateo County, Build Up SMC and the San Mateo County Office of Education held a workshop in April with Elliot Haspel, national child care policy expert and part of the Early Years Climate Action Task Force, on the EYCAP to learn more about it. 

Making Space is a series from the NCFN that explores the importance of and challenges to high-quality child care facilities, and solutions to increase the quality and affordability of child care facilities. 

Build Up wants to thank the NCFN for providing funding for this project.