Everything Tagged with 'adventure playgrounds'
Lessons From Playwork
My wonderful friend Morgan Leichter-Saxby recently wrote what I feel is a brilliant summation of the spirit that drives Playwork and adventure playgrounds in the UK. Framed as five basic lessons she learned from her experiences as a playworker, they appear simple enough, at least at first glance – but having spent countless afternoons in adventure playgrounds myself, I can tell you there is a treasure trove of truth here.
Please do go off and read her full post, pip pip, but for now here are Morgan’s five lessons – they’re honestly all you really need, I believe, to help guide you to having rich and wonderful relationships with children:
- Notice everything. Appreciate how the world around you looks, feels and smells. Think about what else you could do with the things that surround you, what else they could become.
- Be brave, in your own time. Different things are hard for different people. It’s okay – you can decide what’s right for you when you’re ready.
- Be good to people. They’ll generally be good back, and when you meet some who aren’t you’re more likely to have friends to help you out!
- Be yourself. Everything’s more fun if you stop worrying about whether you look silly or might get it wrong. It’s too tiring to try and be what you think other people expect, and frankly not worth the effort.
- Be flexible. Stay light on your feet and keep your eyes open. Unexpected and wonderful things happen all the time, and you don’t want to miss a moment.
Newsreel Playgrounds
Alex Smith, of the PlayGroundology blog, has uncovered gold with this collection of newsreel footage dating from 1939 to 1967, featuring kids playing at playgrounds across Britain. Great footage of some adventure playgrounds in there, too.
“Can a Playground Be Too Safe?”
John Tierney, in the New York Times, reports on a new Norwegian research study about playground safety:
Even if children do suffer fewer physical injuries — and the evidence for that is debatable — the critics say that these playgrounds may stunt emotional development, leaving children with anxieties and fears that are ultimately worse than a broken bone.
“Children need to encounter risks and overcome fears on the playground,” said Ellen Sandseter, a professor of psychology at Queen Maud University in Norway. “I think monkey bars and tall slides are great. As playgrounds become more and more boring, these are some of the few features that still can give children thrilling experiences with heights and high speed.”
And:
By gradually exposing themselves to more and more dangers on the playground, children are using the same habituation techniques developed by therapists to help adults conquer phobias, according to Dr. Sandseter and a fellow psychologist, Leif Kennair, of the Norwegian University for Science and Technology.
“Risky play mirrors effective cognitive behavioral therapy of anxiety,” they write in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, concluding that this “anti-phobic effect” helps explain the evolution of children’s fondness for thrill-seeking. While a youthful zest for exploring heights might not seem adaptive — why would natural selection favor children who risk death before they have a chance to reproduce? — the dangers seemed to be outweighed by the benefits of conquering fear and developing a sense of mastery.
“Paradoxically,” the psychologists write, “we posit that our fear of children being harmed by mostly harmless injuries may result in more fearful children and increased levels of psychopathology.”
Certainly, Sandseter and Kennair’s new study is just one more to go onto a heap of past studies – heralding from all disciplines and dating back over the past several decades – that reinforce children’s need for risk-taking, and that acknowledge the paradoxical dangers of a too-safe childhood environment. It’s still good to see the issue once again pushed to the fore, though.
What’s perhaps more interesting, to me at least, is to see how popular Tierney’s article actually is right now; despite only being published yesterday, it currently ranks #3 in the Most Emailed articles on the NYTimes.com’s website – and just speaking personally, I’ve been forwarded a link to it from no less than a dozen different people, from varying and in many cases unexpected backgrounds. (Even for me that rate and the diversity of sources is unusual.) Likewise, I’ve noticed that Lori Gottlieb’s essay in the Atlantic, “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy”, has experienced a similar effect: it is still #2 in Most Popular articles there – despite being published nearly a month ago – and it has continued to maintain a similar ranking every time I check it every few days or so.
I’m not sure what this says about us adults, but it certainly appears that children’s lives and play are the vogue topics to discuss right now.
Showcasing Modern Playscapes
Paige Johnson, author of the indispensable Playscapes blog, showcases seven great modern playscapes for Dwell Magazine:
From playgrounds that derive inspiration from nature to pop-up urban installations, spaces for play are transitioning away from traditional manufactured solutions—ie. the ubiquitous plastic and/or metal jungle gyms one spies at most playgrounds—and getting the attention they deserve as exciting design opportunities. I use the term playscapes to highlight sites that move beyond the playground fence to become total landscapes for play.
My (absolutely biased) favorite of the bunch is the last one – a Pop-Up Adventure Playground built by kids while provided for by a new organization I’m involved with, called Pop-Up Adventure Play. Paige captures what we try to do with a Pop-Up perfectly: “It lets kids do what they love: make their own spaces for play!”
