Junkyard Chic

If you've been reading here a long time, you'll already know this story. Back in 2010, The Woodland Park Cooperative Preschools were located atop Phinney Ridge, near our namesake zoo. Our outdoor space was little more than a small slab of asphalt. We annexed an area we called "the garden" by fencing in a patch of mud and installing a few raised beds, but nothing grew there because it was the only place we had for kids to dig. Several families told me that they'd almost not enrolled in our school because of our meager outdoor facilities; I'm sure many more families actually did walk away without saying a word. During the previous summer, however, inspired by my friend Jenny of Let the Children Play fame, I began to use the internet to explore more naturalistic play spaces, collecting ideas that I then brought to our parent community in the autumn of 2009, which lead to us building our first outdoor classroom, a transformation you can read about here.

In the pictures you see a nice, tidy, newly created space. And in the beginning, as I was learning on the job how to be an outdoor educator, I tried to keep it that way, but that's not how a good educational environment works: it must evolve along with the children and their play. And as I began to let go, that small space did evolve, becoming looser, more adaptable, and yes, to a certain kind of adult eye, junkier. In fact, one parent, as she explained why she would not be returning with her daughter for the following year told me that part of the reason was that she couldn't stand the "junkyard chic." Although she intended it as a pejorative, I've since used that expression in my own internal dialogs about our outdoor spaces.

In 2011, we moved to our current location at The Center of the Universe, where our community, having done it once on a smaller scale, created our current outdoor classroom, which like its predecessor has evolved a personality of its own, looking similar too, but quite different from the nice, tidy, newly created space it was 26 months ago. Periodically, I feel a ghost of my old control freakishness and hear in myself echoes of that dismissive parent as I look around and think in frustration, "damn this junkyard chic," fighting a strong urge to set everything to rights. But on most days I know I'm looking at a place where the children get to make it their own, a place in which we don't use things, but finish using them, a place where children invent, explore, discover, and play as children naturally do, without regard for chic, junkyard or otherwise.

This brings me to the subject of "adventure playgrounds," one of the concepts that has inspired me since the beginning of my own personal journey. I was recently reminded about them by Vermont-based radio producer and documentary filmmaker Erin Davis, who contacted me about her work. She has completed a radio piece and is currently working on a film documentary entitled Of Kith and Kids, focused on an adventure playground in North Wales called "The Land." I wanted to share some of her teasers with you:

An Adventure Play Documentary from Erin Davis on Vimeo.

"We haven't finished yet!" from Erin Davis on Vimeo.

I Am Good At Doing Stuff from Erin Davis on Vimeo.

I'm really looking forward to this film! Click on over to the Of Kith and Kin page to read more about Erin, her projects, The Land, and how you can support her work. And as an added incentive, Erin has included a terrific video from the 1970's about an early adventure playground in Chelsea, featuring one of the most articulate spokespeople for the idea I've ever heard.

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"A Place To Really Break Your Arm"

As Niki Buchan from Inspired EC and I have been traveling around Australia speaking with teachers, the subject of risk has been at the forefront of many of our conversations. 

We've been taking about healthy risk, of not wrapping our children in cotton wool, of giving them the autonomy and space to experience the real world free of the hyper-vigilence and catastrophic thinking that has invaded our playgrounds and homes over the past decade or so. Increasingly, we're finding that the removal of swings and sticks and rope and water, the installation of spongy "fall" surfaces, padded corners, and ladders that don't wobble, and our cries of "Be careful!" and "Don't run on the pavement!" has lead to a generation of fearful, risk-averse children, kids who've learned incompetence and trepidation. And to make matters worse, we've managed to wind up with children who are more, not less, likely to injure themselves when faced with the real world, while robbing them of the educational benefits that come from engaging the world in a genuine way.

Although this is in a park located in the heart of a city of some 1.8 million, no one is telling these children to stay on the paths, our out of the water. No one is warning them to "be careful" or stop moving the rocks and sticks around.

I get the sense, however, while visiting Down Under, that the pendulum is swinging back the other direction, that parents and educators are coming around to understanding what is lost in a world devoid of pointy bits. Even the new national educational guidelines here urge teachers to introduce challenge and risk. 

On the other hand, I'm not so sure about America. I still get too many folks who are worried about hammers, saws, and glue guns; who fret over every bump and bruise, not understanding that this is the way young children are designed to learn, to fall down, sometimes often. It's why nature has designed children with flexible bones, skulls that are not yet fully fused, short legs that keep them closer to the ground, memories designed to forget quickly, and bodies that are quick to heal. Far more than adults, children are made for physical risk. This is necessary because as our bones grow more brittle, our skulls close up, our legs stretch out, and our bodies take longer to heal as we get older we need to increasingly rely upon the wisdom we gain during these years of falling down.

Steel frames and stacks of sticks for cubby/fort building: a hybrid creation.

And not far away is this more "natural" cubby, perhaps inspired by the "artificial" ones.

I was inspired yesterday morning when Niki and I visited the relatively new Rio Tinto Naturescape at Kings Park in Perth. Built two years ago in the heart of a botanical gardens, this is a place where no one is expected to stay on the paths. As we came upon a man-made waterway, designed with natural elements like rocks of all sizes, lined with trees and bushes, criss-crossed by footbridges, we found children wading about, doing what children naturally do. This particular group was damming up the stream, balancing on the rocks, scavenging far and wide for natural materials with which to do what every child seems programed to do. As we stood watching, a mother cheerfully spoke with us. She said, "I grew up in the country. This is what children need. A place to really break your arm."

A place to mix potions.

As Niki and I explored the 60,000 square meters, a space that felt much, much larger, we noted how quiet the children were. Yes, there were occasional shrieks and screams of joy and adventure, but certainly no crying or bickering.

These man-made towers are hidden around the place, offering both challenge (note the irregular rungs) and vistas from which to gain a bird's eye view of the place.

It was hard not to want to intervene as parents, still versed in the dark art of "be careful," hovering or protecting, but of course, they too have learned these unnatural lessons, things pounded into us by a society made fearful by marketers of "safety" devices and the threat of lawsuits. This is a place for parents to learn, or perhaps un-learn, as well.

A "climber" of ropes, criss-crossed between over-turned trees, their roots reaching for the sky.

Children chose their own level of challenge, some get right up to the very top.

Others elect to stay low to the ground. All of this knowing that there is nothing but ground beneath them.

I was struck as we wandered around the space by the fact that however much we were talking about "nature," this was, in fact, still an unnatural place. There are towers to climb on, caves and frames constructed from steel and rebar, canyons formed from oxidized steel, smooth basins hewn into stone, perfect for mixing up potions, and ropes hung between trees that have been planted upside down, their roots reaching into the sky. My initial instinct was to regret these intrusions as artificial, but the longer we were there the more I understood them as not only inevitable in a city, but desirable. 

I reflected on our  own Lake Union back home in Seattle, a body of water neither fully of nature, nor fully man-made. This is working with nature, not against it, creating new places the way humans always do, places that have never existed until now. This is how we provide these kinds of natural, engaging, and, yes, risky, experiences to our cities, easily accessible, not requiring the burning of gallons of fossil fuel to reach. As we grow up as a species I hope we come to embrace these hybrid places.

Of course, to me, the tourist, Australia is still an exotic place with parrots squawking in the trees, strange insects, and plants that seem like they belong in the era of dinosaurs, but at the same time, there are familiar things like logs, rocks, running water, and tadpoles.

These insects are called "spitfires," I'm told.

As we were leaving to catch our plane to Sydney, we ran into a young man who works there, the first employee we'd seen since we entered. Rio Tinto seemed to have dispensed with the idea of "life guards" and the like, at least not in an obvious way. He asked us how we liked the naturescape, obviously proud. We asked him about injuries. He reported that in two years they had experienced one broken arm, caused by an awkward fall from less than foot off the ground. Not really the answer you might expect from a place where you can really break your arm.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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The Best Game Ever

A few days ago, I wrote about how we had been assembling our new furniture at the workbench. Among the items we worked on were several square tables. Naturally, the kids wanted to grab some chairs and sit around the first one we completed.

As we sat there looking at one another, I asked, "What should we do with our new table."

"Play a game!"

I picked up a stick from the ground and put it in the center of our table. I said, "Here's a game."

The children sat for a moment looking at the stick, then one of them reached out and spun it. She said, "Whoever it points at has to sing a song."

Two boys started singing. She said, "No, no, you're the only singer," pointing at one of the boys.

The other boy objected, "But it's pointing at me."

That's when they realized that the spinner-stick, in fact, had two ends, each pointing to a different player, so they decided it was a "two singer" game. After some discussion over which song to sing, they chose the alphabet song.

When they were done, someone said, "We should play an A-B-C game." Everyone agreed, then sat looking at one another as it sunk in that there needed to be more to make it a game. 

"I know! Teacher Tom will say a letter and if it's your letter, you grab the stick." Everyone knows that "your letter" means the letter at the beginning of your first name. We played a few rounds of this, with me sometimes tossing out letters that belonged to none of them, which lead to us trying to figure out which one of our classmates, were they sitting with us, would be grabbing the stick. Then we expanded the definition of "your letter" to mean any letter found in your name. After awhile, the children just took over shouting out their own letters using a turn-taking system that was not transparent to me, but seemed to satisfy them all.

I walked away, leaving them to it. It must have been a good half hour later that I was back in the area. The game had become rowdy, with lots of stick grabbing and laughing. I heard one of them say, "This is the best game ever!"

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Ropes!

I've been traveling these past couple days in Australia with the wonderful Niki Buchan who is sometimes referred to as "Nature Niki," a woman I'm learning is well deserving of the nickname. I've meet few people who are as truly passionate about nature and educating children in nature. My first evening in the country, we spent our evening in downtown Brisbane, where she joyfully gave me a tour of the city's resident birds, bats, and trees, naming them teaching me how to identify them, and otherwise whetting my appetite for what she assured me would be only the beginning of my experience of Australian wildlife.

Among the subjects we've spoken of at length has been sticks. I suppose that's as inside baseball as it gets for progressive, play-based, early childhood educators. I really can't imagine how tremendously tedious we've sounded to those who've overheard us: And, honey, these two adult people at the airport spoke for a half hour about sticks! But in our world, and the world of just about every child I've ever known, sticks are vitally important, and infinitely useful things. More than one child at Woodland Park has his own "stick collection" at home. At any given moment there will be at least one, usually more, children walking around with a stick in his or her hand. We draw on the ground with sticks. We count sticks. We break them into smaller sticks. We look for longer sticks. We discover thicker sticks or thinner sticks or sticks for stirring or poking or throwing or for using as a drum stick when the actual drumsticks somehow come up wanting.

It's got me thinking that there are a few other simple, versatile tools like that we have out there in our outdoor classroom. There are rocks, of course, and we find any number of uses for the wood chip ground cover we've laid down across our space, but as I scrolled through my photographs, I noticed a man-made one turning up over and over in all sorts of play situations: ropes!

I reckon I'm as interested in ropes as I am in sticks now that I think about it. We keep a dozen or so, perhaps more, ropes lying about our space, almost like parts of the landscape. Most are of the 4-6 foot variety, easy to handle, made of cotton or nylon, but there are longer ones out there, usually found tied to something via complicated knots of a child's invention. And there are even longer ones stashed away in the storage shed should we need them. As with sticks, we've found, ropes are infinitely useful turning up in just about every game we play, machine we invent, or activity in which we engage.

The sad part is that many schools, as with sticks, have chosen to ban ropes. We heard yesterday about a school that punishes children simply for the act of picking up a stick, interpreting that act as intent to hurt someone. Ropes, while perhaps not as common as something that fall from trees, suffer from the same sort of irrational prejudice.

Ropes and sticks, just like any tool, have a potential dark side, of course. As Ani Defranco has said, "Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right," and we can all see she's right if we're willing to engage in catastrophic thinking. But learning to avoid the dark and engage the light always stands at the heart of education. Removing sticks or ropes or anything with a pointy bit or scratchy part, I think, impoverishes our children's education in the name of an impossible standard of what we narrowly call "safety." What sets the human animal apart is our ability to invent and use tools; it's one of the things that makes us truly human, and we lose a bit of what we are, and hide a bit of what we can be, when there are no sticks or ropes in our lives.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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