At UNIS Hanoi, we truly believe that learning takes place everywhere – not just inside the four walls of a classroom. Blessed with mild temperatures, faculty, staff and students have celebrated being in nature and learning outdoors with students of all ages. We have so many beautiful, open, green spaces that our students have been enjoying, including “The Mud Kitchen”, the “Library Hills”, the “Curiosity Garden”, our playgrounds, fields, sandpits and courtyards. 

Students have been getting messy, sweaty, and joyfully dirty this week – engaging with sand, playing with and IN the water, mud, natural building materials, scaling rocks, and enjoying the feeling of the grass beneath their feet.  

The importance of time in nature, of unstructured play, for healthy physical and social development cannot be understated. Dr Richard Louv (“Last Child in the Woods”) asserts that time in nature is not simply leisure time, but an essential investment in the health of our children.