Can Playing in the Woods Help Kids Learn Science Better?

Most of us think science means goggles and lab benches, something for older children. But preschoolers playing outside ask questions like: How do green apples turn red? How do fish breathe underwater? Why do leaves change color in autumn? Their play is full of questions about what they see. What if introducing science were as simple as going outside with them and exploring those questions? 

That idea now anchors Kathleen Mahoney’s PhD research in Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies at UMass Amherst. Her research follows a simple idea with big implications: forest-based, play-driven preschool programs may shape early science learning differently, and she suspects more effectively, than traditional classrooms. 

Mahoney’s path to that question began long before graduate school. After earning a psychology degree from UMass Amherst in 1993, she took what she thought would be a short detour: a job at a residential program for at-risk adolescents. She stayed eleven years. The hands-on work clarified what mattered to her: special education, and led her to a master’s at Elms College. Before she finished, a local district hired her as a special educator, giving her daily, practical experience in early learning. 

When the district could no longer afford to operate all its schools, it consolidated and closed three, and Mahoney was laid off. Almost immediately, neighbors knocked, asking Mahoney to start a preschool to replace the classrooms that had closed. With a preschooler and a newborn at home, she wanted to keep teaching while staying with her children. Recognizing the need, she jumped at the opportunity, got licensed, partnered with nearby farms, and turned her backyard into a nature-based Head Start program. What began as a stopgap grew quickly: enrollment swelled, a two-year waitlist formed, and, as she puts it, “they kept coming and coming,” and she said she “couldn’t get out of it.” 

At home, a simple question nudged the next step. How long would she keep running the school? Mahoney had always wanted a doctorate. “On what?” she wondered. Her husband offered a light nudge: “Take what you love and bring it to the next level.” She laughed: “A dissertation about playing in the woods with kids?” He said yes, and the idea stuck. 

Outdoors, she had seen changes that were hard to ignore. Children were happier and more focused. They managed emotions better, slept more soundly, and ate with real appetite. Their overall well-being improved. If the benefits were visible in daily life, why were they so often missing from mainstream practice? Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods affirmed what she was seeing: strong connections with nature can spark children’s curiosity, health, and resilience. Mahoney’s research question sharpened: how, exactly, does nature-rich, play-based learning support science understanding and well-being, and how can schools use it? 

Mahoney began by reworking an existing survey called PTABS (Preschool Teachers’ Attitudes and Beliefs Toward Science) and added two sections: one on using play as a general teaching method and another on “play-science,” or how teachers guide children to uncover scientific ideas through play. She sent the expanded survey to four settings: private preschools, public programs, Head Start centers, and forest schools, which are year-round outdoor programs that have multiplied since the pandemic. 

“What are we doing in early childhood if we’re not helping children explore their world?”

Results showed statistically significant differences favoring forest-school teachers. To find out why, Mahoney had asked two simple questions in the survey. First: “How do you define early-childhood science learning?” Educators across settings agreed: “Science is learning about the world around you.” Second: “Do you actually teach science here?” Forest-school teachers answered, “That’s what we do, every day, as we play outside.” Many others said science rarely fit into the schedule or felt hard to resource and teach with confidence. “What are we doing in early childhood if we’re not helping children explore their world?” Mahoney wondered. 

Next came a deeper look: a case study at a 58-acre forest-farm program in Central Massachusetts. Children there spend about 75% of the time outside. A trail past a waterfall and beaver pond opens onto a playground of stumps and logs. The teachers’ credentials matched those in private preschools and Head Start. “What’s different,” Mahoney said, “is the steady commitment to child-led curiosity.” She watched four-year-olds dig for “dinosaur bones” planted by teachers, older children count and subtract pinecones, and whole classes track monarch butterflies as part of a citizen-science project. “Literacy and math surface naturally,” she added. “Read-alouds happen on tree stump circle seats, kids check out books with a tablet library app, and they sketch faces on tree bark.” 

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Kathleen Mahoney releasing butterflies with children in the flower gardens at her backyard preschool

From there, Mahoney has framed her doctoral study around three questions: how nature-based educators perceive play-based science; how they enact it; and how they use it to build concepts and sense-making. Mahoney observes and journals these moments, coding them against the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which emphasize practices, core ideas, and crosscutting concepts. Ironically, many forest-school teachers had never heard of NGSS, yet their daily routines already led children to ask questions, gather evidence, and make sense of the world, the very outcomes the standards prescribe. 

Mahoney’s research findings are straightforward. Too many schools still mirror an industrial-era “factory” model with bells, rigid routines, top-down mandates, which misaligns with how young children learn. Her dissertation asks why, in natural, less forced settings, do the same children appear more engaged, calm, and motivated outdoors, and what mechanisms drive those benefits. 

Her goal is practical rather than critical. She wants to identify which elements of forest- and nature-based, play-driven learning transfer well, especially the nature connection, and help programs adapt those pieces to their own contexts. 

Along the way, Mahoney has been recognized as a College of Education Fellow (2019–2020) and a Graduate School Summer Dissertation Fellow (2025). She also serves part-time as an instructional coach with the Northampton Community Preschool Partnership Initiative’s leadership team. 

Ultimately, she hopes this work lowers the barrier for teachers who feel science is “one more thing” squeezed into an already full day. In her vision, science becomes ordinary and accessible, embedded in story time on stump circles, in counting pinecones, in watching the weather change. Not a special unit, but a daily habit of noticing, wondering, and figuring things out. 

As Mahoney puts it, “Science is for everyone.” 

Written by Namrata Masli, PhD student in Chemical Engineering, as part of the Graduate School's Public Writing Fellows Program.