Making the most of Outdoor Classroom Day

On Outdoor Classroom Day on Thursday 17 May children and teachers in kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools, afterschool programmes, colleges and even a few universities (and lots of homeschoolers) in more than 100 countries will enjoy the experience of playing and learning outdoors. Many of them will also take home messages to parents telling them about the importance of outdoor learning and play every day. Maybe some will be encouraged to play out more at home instead of homework.

As an organisation, Outdoor People's social purpose is to get more children and families outdoors. I set up this social enterprise to find ways to change local and global cultures that prevent outdoor play and just getting outside. That's why I and my team are proud to be working with Project Dirt and with Unilever's Dirt is Good teams to lead this ever growing campaign.

It's only two days a year in the UK, but from feedback we have received from teachers who have taken part, many schools have increased the amount of time that children have outside during the school day since getting involved. The exact amount will be revealed on 17 May.

This year the campaign, led by Project Dirt globally and Learning Through Landscapes in the UK, and supported by Unilever's DiG brands worldwide, promises to be the biggest yet. We have partnerships now with NGO's and DiG teams in 10 countries celebrating this on 17 May and another five on 1 November. We're hoping together to easily beat last year's total of 2.3 million children taking part worldwide.

So if you want ideas to get outdoors in Turkish, Spanish or even Thai, just check out the websites for the different countries. And Get Inspired through the get inspired tab - so many teachers and even parents sharing what they are doing to get outdoors, not just on Outdoor Classroom Day, but every day.

It's not too late - all you need to do is sign up and plan to go outdoors, even if it's what you had planned to do anyway. We'd also love you to share what you do and share with friends and colleagues.