Early childhood (0–8 years) is a time of rapid brain development supported by spontaneous and informal learning from the surrounding environment. Meaningful contact with nature (a dynamic and varied source of informal learning) during the early years of life sets up rich scopes for such spontaneous learning—especially in the first three years, a period in life that determines all future learning, behavior, and health. Besides its learning affordances, nature-based environments provide numerous health and developmental benefits. Considering that more than 13 million children under 5 years of age in the US spend most of their waking hours in care facilities, the potential benefits of having a nature-based outdoor area in their primary care environments are immense. However, guidelines and assessment standards for designing nature-based outdoor environments for below-three children (infants and toddlers) are almost non-existent. This three-phase research holds the promise of addressing this issue. Phase 1 reviews the available limited literature on below-three children’s outdoor play and learning environments and summarizes their design implications. Phase 2 extracts effective design guidelines and identifies assessment indicators from the Phase 1 studies. In Phase 3, empirical data (environmental assessment data) are collected to compare the existing and proposed design environment conditions of below-3 outdoor play and learning environments in a selected childcare facility. This phase highlights evidence-based assumptions of new criteria, guidelines, and indicators to assess any below-3 nature-based childcare outdoor environments. This research provides new information and insights for designing nature-based outdoor play and learning environments for below-3 children to increase their meaningful connections with natural elements while attending a care facility.

This scoping review examined the impact of nature-based outdoor learning environments on the formation of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) concepts in preschoolers. Preschool age (3–5 years) is the time when physical interaction with surrounding built environments increases, and spontaneous learning from the environment intensifies—making it an ideal age range to promote nature-based informal learning. An outdoor learning environment can influence STEAM concept formations of preschoolers with an intentional design that offers STEAM learning affordances. Despite the rising interest in early STEAM education, there is still limited literature on how the outdoor environment may influence STEAM learning behaviors of preschoolers (3–5 years old). This scoping review intended to evaluate the existing knowledge regarding the physical factors contributing to STEAM learning affordances in an outdoor environment for children aged three to five. The review included studies from the last twenty years. This scoping review was conducted following the criteria outlined in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). For this scoping review, 843 citations were discovered across four databases (JSTOR, Scopus, EBSCOhost, and Web of Science), ProQuest, and Google Scholar, and 31 articles were considered eligible for inclusion. The paper synthesized those 31 studies to identify the key STEAM learning behaviors of children and STEAM-activity-supportive settings that may positively influence preschoolers’ STEAM concept development.

Science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) learning is directly connected with children's cognitive development. Measuring the cognitive advancements of young children is more challenging than that of older ones because young children experience vast variations in the different personal, developmental, and environmental factors affecting their learning behaviors. Also, much learning in the early years is informal in nature, posing added challenges in systematic assessment. There are several assessment tools available for evaluating childcare settings and assessing science learning within the context of the classroom, but none for assessing outdoor learning environments. However, research shows that the outdoor physical environment of early childcare facilities has a long-lasting influence on cognitive development as well as on the quality of STEAM learning for children. There is a critical need for systematic tools to assess formal and informal early STEAM learning outdoor environments to advance both fields of early childhood education and design. This systematic review aims to document all existing tools available for assessing (a) the quality of the childcare outdoor environments and (b) the quality of STEAM learning of children aged 3–5 outside the classroom context, addressing the current lack of reliable and valid assessment measures in this emerging field. The synthesis of information from a selection of 20 studies revealed that STEAM-based outdoor learning at the preschool age is a relatively new topic and that there are no assessment tools or indicators that can assess the available opportunities in the outdoor physical environment and their affordances of STEAM learning activities and activity settings in early childhood environments (e.g., childcare centers, family care homes, or preschools). This deficiency demands more research in the areas of systematic environmental assessments of landscape design indicators in early childhood settings to advance spontaneous STEAM learning behaviors in the early years.

How hands-on gardening impacts behaviors including healthy eating and physical activity during early childhood can be of critical importance for preventing the early onset of obesity. This study investigates how participating in hands-on gardening impacts preschoolers’ (3–5 years old) physical activity (measured by accelerometers) in childcare centers in the semi-arid climate zone. The research was conducted in eight licensed childcare centers located in West Texas with 149 children (n = 149). Four childcare centers in the experimental group received hands-on garden interventions; the other four in the control group did not. In both experimental (intervention) and control (non-intervention) centers, children wore Actigraph GT3X+ accelerometers continuously for 5 days before and for 5 days after intervention (a total of 10 days). Results show that the duration of sedentary behavior of children in the experimental (intervention) group significantly decreased compared to children in the control (non-intervention) group. The finding suggests that the positive effects of childcare hands-on gardening on physical activity extend to semi-arid climate zones where gardening is challenging due to high temperatures and lack of annual rainfall. The research emphasizes the critical need to incorporate hands-on gardening in childcare centers as an obesity prevention strategy nationally in the US and beyond.

This systematic review aims to synthesize key empirical findings to understand how various elements of the built environment influence the microbiome concerning children’s health and well-being. A comprehensive literature search was conducted across multiple databases, focusing on studies that examined the relationship between built environment factors and the microbiome aspects of childhood. A total of 42 studies were included in the final systematic review. We analyzed these studies from a range of different lenses, starting with basic research questions and variables to types of built environments, age groups of children, sampling strategy, bioinformatics, and the biological methods utilized. This review highlights a growing emphasis on children’s exposure to nature within built environments and its potential to beneficially alter the microbiome, with 38% of studies addressing this link. It also identifies a significant research gap in connecting built environment design features (landscape and/or architectural) to microbiome outcomes and associated health, behavioral, and mental health impacts on children. The findings indicate that interventions aimed at improving the built environment quality via design could foster healthier microbiomes in children’s environments. This review underscores the need for interdisciplinary research and policy initiatives that integrate microbiome science with built environment design to promote children’s health and well-being.

Hands-on gardening is linked with healthy eating behaviors, increased outdoor activities, and overall well-being, all contributing factors to preventing obesity. Although these positive associations are widely established for adults and school-aged children, little evidence can be found on how such relationships may extend to early childhood, especially in the preschool years (3–5 years). One recent study conducted in North Carolina (NC) showed that participating in hands-on gardening significantly increased preschoolers’ accurate identification of fruits and vegetables (FV) and FV consumption compared to children who did not participate in hands-on gardening, but no association was found between participation in hands-on gardening and the children’s liking (eating preferences) of FV. FV identification and liking during the early years may lead to lifelong healthy eating behaviors and preferences, making hands-on gardening a critical health intervention in early childhood environments, especially in childcare centers where a majority of the 13 million children in the United States between the ages of 0 and 5 spend most of their waking hours. This research aimed to investigate how hands-on gardening in childcare centers may impact preschoolers’ (3–5 years old) FV knowledge (identification) and liking in a semi-arid climate zone with a high concentration of Hispanic families by conducting experimental research with eight childcare centers and one hundred forty-nine children (n = 149) in Lubbock County, located in West Texas. The findings showed changes in average liking scores are generally positive in the experimental group of children who participated in hands-on gardening (compared to the control non-gardening group), implying an improved liking. The findings indicate that the benefits of hands-on gardening in childcare centers for enhancing healthy eating preferences are evident even in a semi-arid climate zone, where high temperatures and limited rainfall present significant gardening challenges. This research underscores the importance of integrating hands-on gardening into childcare programs, highlighting its potential as an effective obesity prevention strategy not only within the US but also in other regions with similar environmental constraints.