April 24th is Healthy Environments for Learning Day, led by the Canadian Partnership for Children's Health & Environment! The 2025 campaign centers on protecting children from extreme heat in schools and child care settings (including outdoor play and learning spaces) in Canada. This campaign has been co-signed by 40+ organizations, including Outdoor Play Canada. Check-out the full...
Thank you to Iryna Demchenko for providing this post. This post summarizes a service spotlight article titled “Celebrating a decade of the Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance and its Global Matrix initiative,” recently published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Regular physical activity is important for children's growth and development. However, in the last decades,...
The Children, Youth, & Environments Network of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA CYE) is thrilled to present an online webinar led by Louise Chawla, a Professor Emeritus in the Environmental Design Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. This webinar will explore the numerous benefits of connecting with nature while also addressing the challenges of...
Thank you to Taylor Bradbury, CHEO HALO Research Group Placement Student, Carleton University BHSc, for providing this post. It is widely accepted that time spent participating in outdoor physical activity (OPA) can have a positive impact on adolescent well-being, including mental health1. But how much OPA should youth be getting, and to what extent does it...
Thank you to Mads Bølling, Peter Elsborg, Lærke Mygind, Charlotte Demant Klinker, Glen Nielsen and Peter Bentsen for providing this post. Physical activity in schools is not just about keeping children active – it can also play a crucial role in supporting their learning and overall well-being. Many schools, especially in Western countries, have embraced outdoor...
Outdoor Play Canada is thrilled to announce that registration is now open, and we are currently accepting presentation/workshop submissions for the 2025 Breath of Fresh Air (BoFA) Outdoor Play Summit. The BoFA Outdoor Play Summit will once again take place at Wesley Clover Parks in Ottawa, Ontario, from September 25-27, 2025, in partnership with the...
Outdoor Play Canada is looking to hire a full-time Canadian Centre for Outdoor Play (CCOP) Fellow for one year to build capacity and thought-leadership for outdoor play stakeholders. As the CCOP Fellow, your role will be to lead advocacy and thought-leadership initiatives for the promotion of outdoor play in the early years, in collaboration with...
Are you worried about the winter blues? Celebrating its 10th year in the UK and 2nd here in Canada, RED (Rise Every Day) January is a nationwide community that's open to individuals and teams of all ages and abilities. RED's philosophy is to empower all of us to move and boost our mood in the...
Since 2020, the PaRx Prescription for Nature program has meant that physicians first in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario (and now many more) could prescribe a Parks Canada Discovery Pass to their patients for the purposes of promoting physical and mental health. A collaboration between PaRx, an initiative driven by health care professionals that promotes...
Through our partners at the CHEO Research Institute, we are recruiting a full-time Research Assistant to join the research arm of our Canadian Centre for Outdoor Play research-practice-policy partnership! See the LinkedIn post for more details and/or the job description below: RI-24-055 Research Assistant (HALO)...
