Everything Tagged with 'play'
How to Bore the Children
Charles Eisenstein:
Here is how to make a child bored: first and foremost, keep him indoors so that the infinitude of nature, its endless variation and chaotic messiness is replaced by a finite, orderly, predictable realm. Second, through television and video games, habituate him to intense stimuli so that everything else seems boring by comparison. Third, eliminate as much as possible any unstructured time with other children, so that he loses his capacity for creative play and needs entertainment instead. Fourth, shorten his attention span with fast-paced programming, dumbed-down books, and frequent interruptions of his play. Fifth, hover over him whenever possible to stunt his self-trust and make him dependent on outside stimulation. Sixth, hurry him from activity to activity to create anxiety about time and eliminate the easy sense of timelessness native to the young.
A somewhat needlessly anti-media piece, but it makes for nice musing. Plus, it introduces a new phrase I think I really like: “the primal self-sufficiency of play.”
McDonald’s Unveils New Senior Citizen PlayPlace
The Onion:
In an effort to accommodate an aging customer base and make the McDonald’s experience “super fun for seniors 65 to 95,” the fast-food chain unveiled its new Senior Citizen PlayPlaces Wednesday. “The ball pit has a special winch to lower seniors into and out of it,” said day-shift manager Will Earle, adding that the tunnel-maze has multiple exits in case seniors become disoriented or scared. “We have a slide wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs, and on Saturdays, Ronald himself stops by to make balloon animals and just talk to the old folks. They like talking to Ronald.” McDonald’s confirmed plans to open even more senior PlayPlaces by 2013, saying they provide a space in which children can enjoy a meal and still keep an eye on their elderly parents or grandparents.
Simply priceless.
Fred Rogers Center Launches New Curriculum Toolkit
Total academic nerdery on my part, especially as I’m currently developing a new course at the university about Children’s Media, but possibly also of interest to two of you:
The Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College has announced the launch of the online Curriculum Toolkit as a new resource for college and university faculty that combines video footage from the Fred Rogers Archive with a variety of multimedia course materials. […]
The initial set of Curriculum Toolkit syllabi, collected from college and university faculty nationally, covers language development, creativity, music, and the role of play, among other relevant topics. The Curriculum Toolkit also provides a number of assignment ideas that include everything from puppet construction to assessing emotional development in children. A reference area includes research abstracts and links to other research in the field.
If nothing else, and even if you aren’t academic faculty, the videos and interviews the Center has collected here are just gold.
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.
Designing Streets for Play
Kerala Taylor, of KaBOOM!, talks about the opportunities that can exist for play in urban planning and street design. Interesting article, but here’s the real money quote:
Play is a mindset. It shouldn’t be restricted to the playground; neither should it be restricted to children. Play is for everyone and can happen everywhere!
Very true; also very interesting to see this coming from the KaBOOM! organization – whose bread and butter comes almost exclusively from perpetuating the old traditional, prefabricated fixed-equipment playground model. That Kerala, though – she has always been quite the rebel… so who knows.
Children’s Playhouses, Serious Grown-Up Cash
A feature in the Times about the booming ‘playhouse’ construction business, that’s taken off despite the recession:
Mr. Dwyer has installed playhouses that look like pirate ships, windmills and castles at the homes of several film and sports stars who asked not to be named to protect their children’s privacy.
“Only a certain kind of clientele can afford what we offer,” he said. And few have backyards big enough to hold it. Red Beard’s Revenge, for example, is a $52,000 playhouse in the shape of a 12-foot-tall, 18-foot-long pirate ship, complete with a crow’s nest, upper and lower decks made of mahogany and leather benches in the captain’s quarters that double as beds. […]
Barbara Butler, an artist and playhouse builder in San Francisco, said her sales are up 40 percent this year, and she has twice as many future commissions lined up as she did this time last year. Not only that, but the average price of the structures she is being hired to build has more than doubled, from $26,000 to $54,000.
It’s probably easy to see the ludicrousness in all of this – but let’s take a stab at it, shall we? Real imaginative play is almost directly antithetical to predesigned, adult-built structures, which lack all of the opportunities for a child’s agency and control over the environment that, say, a plain stack of scavenged wood, a bucket of nails, and a little paint might offer that child. In fact, while the obligatorily-quoted psychologist in the article, Dr. Steven Tuber of City University of New York, notes that “over-the-top playhouses may do something for the parent’s sense of grandeur, [but] certainly are irrelevant to the child’s needs and desires for a play space,” I’d go further and say they’re not just irrelevant but are directly obstructive to children’s play – adulterating it with preconceived expectations about what that play should be, to say nothing of shifting the control and maintenance of the environment over to adults.
What strikes me as more ludicrous, though, are the dominant reasons people seem to be buying – and builders seem to capitalize on while selling – these expensive playhouses:
“Childhood is a precious and finite thing,” Ms. Butler said. “And a special playhouse is not the sort of thing you can put off until the economy gets better.”
Not to go on an Old Sociologist Guy rant here, but – well, yes, to go on a rant… Let’s just be clear on something. “Childhood” = not about how fancy of stuff you had growing up, while “being a good parent” = not about simply outspending your neighbors on fancy playhouses and Baby Einstein DVDs. And there’s nothing “precious” about childhood; that’s just you being stupidly drunk with nostalgia. To the point: while some of these playhouses might look cute, and even be fun for children (for a while), they ultimately only undercut children’s independence, creativity, and control over their play – whereas these kids might just be better served with a bike and a summer of free afternoons where they can do whatever they like, and scavenge for spare materials and loose parts to build their own playhouses.
If there’s one silver lining to all of this, it’s that I think kids see through all this BS quite clearly. The kids from the families featured in the article might be too young now, but it won’t be long before they’re 10 or 11 years old and taking a hammer and saw to the playhouse because they know that can build something that’s better.
“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!”
The Boundaries of ‘Home’ for Children
Mike Lanza, of Playborhood, takes a moment to consider the geographic range of mobility afforded to his own children and others in his neighborhood. As Mike prefaces, it’s important to realize that the concept of ‘home’ for kids can and should extend well beyond their family’s own physical house or property:
Our house is as shown, but our boys freely and regularly roam well beyond its walls. Their natural border even extends beyond our yard. They frequent all front yards of the properties two to our left and right, plus the sidewalks and part of the street in front of all these properties, plus the entire house and back yard to our left (they frequently run in and out of there), plus two back yards behind us.
“Home” for my boys is a place well beyond our house that they feel comfortable in. They feel an attachment to every corner of the area I circled. They’re always surrounded here by people they know and like and trust.
It’s an interesting perspective to think about your neighborhood in, and to ask yourself: just how wide is the range of mobility my children are allowed around their home? What defines the boundaries of that range? And what kinds of environmental diversity, terrain features, and opportunities for stimulation are actually afforded to children within that space? To cut to the chase: Just how ‘big’ and how ‘playable’ is your neighborhood for children, exactly?
Almost Everything You Could Want to Know About Rock, Paper, Scissors
That Avalanche Gambit – it gets me every time.
‘Play as Something Close to the Divine’
Columnist Andrew Sullivan also recently decided to weigh in on Melvin Konner’s new book, entitled “The Evolution of Childhood” – which discusses the evolutionary nature and need for play. Sullivan’s response to it is almost equally enchanting and poetic (as it’s so short I’ve included it in full):
Well, yes, maybe [play is a rooted function of evolution]. But once one leaves the reductionism of evolutionary biology, can we not see play as also, well, play? And play is defined by its uselessness, its freedom, its ability to resist productivity. It is a form of ultimate freedom - in my view, the freest human beings can be. Because a game has no known winner in advance, if it has any winner at all. It is about being together and engaging together without an ulterior purpose.
That’s why I see play as something close to the divine. That’s why I believe Jesus loved children. Because, in play, they had found a way to be with each other without any other over-arching purpose.
Sullivan’s understanding and opinion of play reminds me very much of Howard Chudacoff, who lays forth a similar philosophy in his brilliant book “Children at Play: An American History”.
The Atlantic: ‘Play’s the Thing’
Benjamin Schwarz reviews a new book by Melvin Konner called “The Evolution of Childhood.” In short, it sounds really, really good. A particular passage from Schwarz’s review which stuck out at me was this one:
Konner is especially interested in play, which is not unique to humans and, indeed, seems to have been present, like the mother-offspring bond, from the dawn of mammals. The smartest mammals are the most playful, so these traits have apparently evolved together. Play, Konner says, “combining as it does great energy expenditure and risk with apparent pointlessness, is a central paradox of evolutionary biology.” It seems to have multiple functions—exercise, learning, sharpening skills—and the positive emotions it invokes may be an adaptation that encourages us to try new things and learn with more flexibility. In fact, it may be the primary means nature has found to develop our brains.
‘Games Have Crept Out and They’re Going Everywhere’
Carnegie Mellon University professor Jesse Schell’s excellent presentation about how many new products and marketing efforts are being designed as games or in otherwise playful ways – i.e., a great example being geocaching: “Because it’s cooler to go for a walk in the woods when there’s a treasure chest at the end.”
See the full presentation here.
A great talk, and I’m actually excited to see how much the idea of play has filtered into the commercial world we live in. (Unfortunately this same thought also seems to be scaring the dickens out of some people, too. Go figure.)
School Playgrounds Yield Better Math Students
A recent Boston University study (whose efforts initially emerged out of the Boston Schoolyard Initiative, a public-private partnership established in the mid-1990s to restore Boston’s playgrounds) considers the important role of environment and play in education, examining whether better school playgrounds have an impact on student achievement.
“I really wasn’t expecting to find anything,” says Russell Lopez, a School of Public Health assistant professor of Environmental Health, citing the relatively small sample of schools. “I thought, even if there is a real effect, there are so few schools involved that it doesn’t have a lot of statistical power.”
When Lopez studied the 2003 results of the fourth-grade English language MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System), standardized tests that almost all public school students must take, he saw no discernible differences between children at the 70 schools with new playgrounds and children at schools with old playgrounds.
But when he looked at math scores, he saw a very different picture. In schools where fourth graders had new playgrounds, 25 percent more kids passed the math MCAS. And that remained true after he and his team controlled for factors such as demographics and the number of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches.
The researchers suggest several reasons for the association between better schoolyards and improved test scores. It may be that students at schools with upgraded playgrounds get more physical activity, which may make them more willing and able to learn once they’re back at their desks. It could also be the result of more parental involvement in the schools. Or, Lopez says, “It could be that students and teachers feel better about going to schools that are not dreary, jail-like settings and that look more inviting. That might set up people to want to learn.”
While Lopez acknowledges the limitations of his ecological study, I believe we’d do well as a society to consider education from a more holistic perspective. Lopez seems to think so, too:
Lopez believes his findings are particularly important at a time when the slumping economy is forcing schools across the nation to tighten their belts. “I worry that the first thing that gets cut is the outdoor space,” he says. “There are a lot of people who think that it’s not important, that all kids need is reading, writing, and arithmetic. And I think what this shows is that getting kids to learn is a broader experience. How places look and how they’re used are as important as what goes on in the classroom.”