Playing in the mud, rolling down a grassy hill and hiding in the bushes are childhood activities that could be frowned upon by some preschool instructors.

The Outdoor Classroom Project at the Hancock College Children’s Learning Center is changing that attitude.

“Children are suffering from nature deficit disorder,” said Thesa Roepke, program director and early childhood studies instructor. “Children can have an outdoor experience even though they are in an urban setting.”

The Hancock center last month earned recognition as a demonstration site in the Outdoor Classroom Project, a concept developed by Eric and Elyssa Nelson’s Child Educational Center in La Cañada and promoted by the Orfalea Foundation.

Nelson began developing the Outdoor Classroom Project in 1979 in Pasadena at Caltech. The project got a boost from a $1 million grant from the First 5 Foundation of Los Angeles a couple of years ago. The Orfalea Foundation has brought the project out of the Los Angeles Basin to schools and centers on the Central Coast.

The Hancock Children’s Center joined several other locations from Carpinteria to San Luis Obispo as a demonstration site. It’s the first such site in Santa Maria.

The Outdoor Classroom Project is based on a simple concept, Nelson said.

“It basically means children are able to learn outdoors whatever they can learn indoors,” said Nelson, adding that demonstration sites have to meet specific criteria. “You have a physical environment, a curricular structure and a set of teacher practices, all of which support children’s outdoor play, learning and development at a certain level of sophistication.

“The demonstration site basically achieves that level of development and they have to be willing to let people come and visit their center and observe what is happening there.”

The concept is that children can learn more when they’re active and engaged, and that happens more easily outside.

The integration of the Hancock center into an Outdoor Classroom demonstration site was the culmination of the perfect storm of child care, education, a progressive philosophy and Measure I construction.

“I think we’ve always been innovators. We’ve always been outdoors first,” said Judith Dal Parto, program coordinator and early childhood studies lead teacher, who has been at the college for more than 30 years.

The teachers and staff at the Hancock center combine instruction with play. Students can do everything from work in gardens to play in the mud pit, an activity that requires agreeable parents, tolerant, well-trained staff and plenty of extra clothes for the kids.

“In most programs when a child goes outside, the adult is a supervisor. In our program, the adult is a collaborator,” Roepke said.

Staff at the center includes both preschool instructors and aides, along with college instructors. The center, then, teaches both college students and preschool children. About 90 percent of the children at the center belong to Hancock students or staff, with a small percentage coming from the community, Roepke said.

“There was a real strong philosophical connection to the Outdoor Classroom Project and what we were already doing,” Roepke said. “We’re a teaching institution. We owe it to our students to be on the forefront of childhood development.”

While the Hancock center is already an Outdoor Classroom demonstration site, it will soon get even better for the students and teachers. The college is building an addition to the children’s center as part of the Measure I construction projects. It will add more classroom space for the infant and toddlers and it will allow the Outdoor Classroom to get an extreme makeover.

Nelson has been working with building architect Bill Koster of MVE Institutional in Irvine and landscape architect Ann Sever of Wallace Group in San Luis Obispo to improve the outdoor classroom. His consultation services on the project are being paid for by the Orfalea Foundation.

The remodel will eliminate plastic and pipe play structures and utilize more natural and earth-friendly materials. Earth-tone Trex play structures, more grass, stone and plant materials will make the playground even more kid-friendly.

The new preschool play area will have a creek flowing through one section.

A garden in the play area currently features strawberries, grape vines, corn stalks and other crops grown on the Central Coast. Dal Parto said the center brought these crops into the garden to teach the children about the area’s agriculture. It also encourages the children to eat fruits and vegetables, she said. The garden will grow during the remodel.

The children’s center addition is scheduled to break ground in January 2011 and take about a year to complete.

“The outdoors isn’t about large play structures and plastic and clutter. It’s about bring nature back into children’s lives,” Roepke said.