When was the last time you reveled in the great outdoors? If you’re like me, then some of your best and warmest memories come from not only being outside but also from the unbound, freewheeling kind of play that makes being outside a kid’s paradise. “Just you wait,” I tell my two boys, who are at the stage where they should just go out and make some memories. And in the countdown to the summer, I have begun reimagining for them what playing outside truly means and can mean.
In this post, I’ll take a deep dive into the nature playscapes and adventure playgrounds that I love. I’ll explore what makes them not just spaces where Mother Nature goes to the “Extreme Home Makeover” version of herself, designing much, much better than most human designers could even imagine doing—and what makes them do better than other spaces at giving kids a panoply of payoffs that laudable child-development experts say our kids need. And though the conversation I’ll stitch together in this post might wander a bit, I’ll do my best to keep it illustrated with snazzy pictures and I’ll at least try to make from my-times-have-changed to amazing-what-I-found perspective. So, sit back, get comfortable, and join me for coffee. We’re going way out into the wilds of the domain where kids play in Nature.
The Enchantment of Natural Playgrounds
The first time my daughter came across a nature playscape, she reacted with a kind of joy and astonishment that is hard to overstate. As though happening upon some sort of miracle, she discovered a playground that was elemental and imaginative in a way that she could immediately recognize but that isn’t the stuff of ordinary playgrounds. No shiny metal bars and plastic slide here. Instead, there was a supremely climbable arrangement of boulders and stones that could only be described as “child-size,” a plaza of balancing logs set up in an unfixed antepattern, and a stream yes, a real stream that had the run of a little wetland.
Play areas known as nature playscapes are designed to imitate real wild settings. Instead of using plastic toys, the equipment found in a nature playscape might include sand, water, rocks, or trees—stuff that I would argue is a lot more fun to play with than monkey bars or a seesaw. Traditional playgrounds tend to be overlit, kind of like a dentist’s office. Playgrounds in natural settings, on the other hand, are a lot more pleasing to the eye.
During one weekend, we went to see a natural outdoor play area at a nearby park. My daughter and her friend Carl seemed to just disappear into it and spent hours engineering dams across the several little waterways that ran through it. They built one so high that the entire flow of the stream was stopped. Then, they built a bridge across their waterless dam, and that, too, seemed to have no beginning and no end. Afterward, they played “explorers,” pushing toward some outer orbit of the outdoor area that they hadn’t yet ventured into.
The nature playscape is a rich learning environment. When children play on a mound of dirt, for instance, they are not just “hanging out,” but are also engaged in a host of other valuable activities that contribute to their development. In these and similar spaces, children very naturally incorporate all kinds of play. And on a well-designed nature playscape, not all children everywhere incorporate it in exactly the same way. That’s because there are lots of “unique play moments” to be had.
An Individual Story
My daughter learned a vital lesson on resilience during a visit to a favorite nature play space. She absolutely had to make it across the zigzag of rough-hewn granite blocks bridging a little urban stream. She lost her balance again and again, landing in the water more times than any pair of quick-drying adventure pants would like. But with each dunking, up she rose, steadfast in her will to conquer the stepping stones. In the end, she succeeded. And I think that Moabite-like determination shall serve her well in life.
The Excitement of Adventure Playgrounds
Nature playscapes are nice. They offer an environment where a child’s imagination can run just as wild as the child itself. But playscapes take into consideration safety restrictions while working with the definite amount of potential energy that a child’s body possesses. Adventure playgrounds fulfill both those requirements that playscapes meet while offering something more. They are not limited by the child’s imagination (which can be almost too whimsical at times), and they are places where parents can be sure that, even if their children are running about like maniacs, they (the children) are doing so in a space that has an organic, non-linear layout and (usually) soft, welcoming ground coverings.
The first time I took my son to an adventure playground, he hesitated, unsure what to do with the array of objects, both natural and manmade, scattered apparently randomly across the space. But as soon as he saw other kids starting to make forts and obstacles, he dove in headfirst. Within a short time, he was hammering away, sawing, and working with some other boys and on one of those “gigantic treehouses.”
In the adventure playground, children have full authority and are given lots of opportunities to be responsible. There is a padded floor that allows them to take dangerous, realistic risks. For instance, if you are a 6-year-old and want to throw yourself into the air and land in any manner you want without anyone telling you what you cannot and must not do, how can you do it safely? The rule-breaking creativity of the playground that first made me love tool-using is given full rein here.
When we went to visit, we saw a bunch of kids having a hard time making a bridge with planks of wood and some rope. But they kept at it, and just as we were getting ready to leave, they got the thing up and were cheering for themselves in a way that made us want to cheer too. It served as a succeedingly potent reminder that sometimes learning is all about going through and coming out on the other side of failure—which is not a story our schools always tell.
Let Me Tell You A Story
During a subsequent visit, my son and his friends opted to build a zip line from scratch. My first question upon seeing the rope and the tire they’d be using (don’t worry, the tire was only for seat substitution, not as some sort of pulley) was how and where they planned to anchor their line. They spent the better part of a day working out the physics of the situation, which was some steps up from a fair amount of play with water balloons. Their final product was a “sketchy,” as my son put it, zip line that ran across “a good chunk of our backyard.”
The Importance of These Playgrounds
In a society where “screen time” is an increasingly popular way to pass the time, we offer children and young people an alternative particularly those in the 9-12 age range. Our mission is to reconnect kids with nature and to help them understand it in a variety of ways. We feel that the world of nature playscapes, outdoor adventure, and even traditional nature camps adequately covers a way to go “broadly” with kids and the concept of “place.” With visionary guidance from Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods,” and other leading biophilic theorists (those who believe humans have an innate love for and connection to the natural world), we proceed under an empowered wind.
Studies have proven that boundless play is critical for the development of many cognitive, emotional, and social skills. It is the type of play that is most often associated with the development of executive functions (cognitive skills that are key to mental and physical health), such as the ability to focus, plan, and resist impulsivity. When it comes to children’s play, the landscape architect Susan Solomon has found that some environments offer markedly superior conditions than others. Not surprisingly, those places are usually outdoors, with lots of play mounds and tall grass to hide in, plus abundant climbable features and play props.
A salient strength of natural playgrounds is that they can serve children of all ages and abilities. Old playgrounds can be strangely age-bound, with equipment sized and designed for some awkward age groupings. Even worse, they offer few components that can be manipulated and used creatively by children. Natural and adventure playgrounds, by contrast, have lots of what they call “loose parts”—things like sticks and stones, tarps and ropes—that children can use in imaginative play. In addition, they offer old-fashioned pleasures: tree climbing, tunneling in the dirt, making forts.
Speaking from personal experience, I have witnessed the beneficial effects that these natural playgrounds bring to my kids. Their self-assurance has grown; they’ve become more resilient and more in tune with the outdoors. My children and many others have learned to work in teams, think through problems, and take measured risks—and all have done so while having the kinds of fun that childhood ought to be full of.
The Educational Worth
Playgrounds also offer immeasurable educational value. They are living classrooms for children. They learn about the basics of science, especially life science, and where the building blocks of life are. And if they think about it, they are really living in the same kind of biome and the same kind of ecology that we have in natural places. And then you get into the eco or Disneyland part of it, and the possibilities for learning are then on an electric, very wired basis. Now the playground is becoming something that the kids are calling to first—half of your day. Most architecture that is kid-useful, the bulk of it is there in the playground.
Impact on the Community
Adventure playgrounds and playscapes in nature can do more than just serve individuals. They can also bring about community-wide benefits. By functioning as a space where families can meet and mingle, an adventure playground can nurture a sense of togetherness among all sorts of people. It can remain a positive fixture in a community, a safe place to interact, full of opportunities for relaxation and education by way of “loose parts” like learning labs, as well as places just to play. And play can spark some serious creativity, among kids and the adults who engage in these spaces with them.
Helpful Hints for Parents
Are you thinking about taking your children to a natural playscape or an adventure playground? If yes, mull over these down-to-earth suggestions before you pack up and go.
1. Prep for Sloppiness: When it comes to outdoor play, neatness doesn’t count. In fact, it is practically impossible for it to “count” or even exist in that type of play scenario! Why? Think it through: when your kinds are outside, they’re making forts and fires (hopefully extinguished), playing with water and rocks and mud, and just generally engaging in full-body, 100%-of-the-time messy stuff.
2. Essential Packing: Don’t forget the absolute necessities: Sunscreen, water, and food. Those are the things you’ll definitely need while you’re there. And though food and water are obviously important, sunscreen is a must, too, even if you’re not hanging out at the beach or pool.
3. Promote Self-sufficiency: Allow your child to investigate and participate in individual play. Fight the compulsion to step in, except when it’s absolutely necessary. This will help your child cultivate a “can-do” attitude and sense of self-direction and self-sufficiency that are the basis of leadership skills.
4. Patience, Please: Disarray may rule during unstructured play, but such times are crucial to learning and development. It’s particularly important to allow kids to work through moments of not knowing, as that’s precisely when opportunities for judgment calls and problem-solving are most likely to occur. They may be far more aware of what’s going on than it seems.
5. Participate Wholeheartedly: There’s no need to shy away from jumping into the action. Building blanket forts and splashing around in a creek can be loads of fun—and they’re experiences that can bring the whole family closer together. Don’t be the parent who always says “no” when asked to join in (unless it’s past 11 p.m., your kids have “Beaded Daddy” enough, and you’re trying to get them to go to bed already).
More than being just mere locations for merriment, natural play spaces, created with trees, shrubs, flowers, water, and other processes or materials that Mother Nature herself uses, are something increasingly different. Not just because they’re popped together in the 3D world of reality, rather than on an architect’s computer, but because, as Susan Solomon says in The Science of Play, these places offer “a unique blend of physical activity, creativity, and social interaction that is essential for healthy development.”
Playgrounds supply a safe and carefree matrix for children to laugh, let off steam, and even unlock a few secrets about themselves. Many of us have formative memories of time spent on play equipment, on lots with enclosures, and on ground covered with what used to be called “safety surfacing.” Yet what we enjoyed was an ingenious form of structured freedom in which we not only (with our friends) tackled real and imagined problems but also, in doing so, built up our reservoirs of neurocognitive skills.
