Play Archives | Brighter Schooling

With the launch of Rio Tinto Naturescape Kings Park, Perth kids can problem solve, build resilience and practise enquiry-based learning through nature play.

Last month, I attended the official launch of stage two of Rio Tinto Naturescape Kings Park. I got to climb over rocks, poke my head into hidey-holes and even dip my toes in the water of this amazing nature play area.

If you haven’t been keeping up to date with your local parenting groups, you might not know what ‘nature play’ is, let alone realise what it has to do with science!

Prepare to get your hands dirty because nature play is all about getting back to the bush.

Back in my day …

Anyone over the age of 30 probably remembers spending most of their childhood outdoors.

My parents love to tell me how, when they were kids, their parents would shoo them out of the house in the morning, and they were expected to entertain themselves outdoors until tea time. They’d spend glorious days exploring on their banana seat bikes and running through the bush.

Nowadays, stranger danger is high, kids are overscheduled and their downtime is often screen time.

The idea behind nature play—unstructured play outdoors—is to bring things back to basics. It allows kids to explore the natural environment by giving them a safe space to do so.

“That opportunity just to run around in the bush and make mud pies and build cubby houses is lost to [the kids of today],” says Jacqui Kennedy, head of the Kings Park education team.

“So that’s what we wanted to bring back for them, because in doing that, they’re using their imaginations and … actually really using their brain to discover new things, to problem solve”.

“Play is the highest form of research”

This quote probably wasn’t uttered by Einstein as Google suggests, but there’s still a lot of truth to it.

At the core of all research is curiosity and the desire to answer questions.

Nature play allows children to be scientists by getting them curious about the world around them and encouraging them to answer questions.

“If you love the environment and you’re connected with it, you want to delve deeper and engage and ask questions,” says Kiely O’Flaherty, a Kings Park education officer.

“I’ve got kids myself, and it’s nice to actually be able to reconnect with the kids and get excited by their questions and then try to help them discover answers.”

This learning through asking questions is called enquiry-based learning.

“Naturescape itself is built for enquiry-based learning and science,” says Charlotte Vaughan, Kings Park’s education coordinator.

“By having a play space that kids connect with nature and get excited by nature—that leads to science,” adds Kiely.

Play space not playground

If you’re going to get back to nature, you’ve got to do it right.

You won’t find any brightly coloured plastic swings or slides at Rio Tinto Naturescape Kings Park. What you will find are branches to build a cubby house, trees to climb, water to wade in and a mud-making station.

“We decided early on, when we wanted to connect children with nature, we didn’t want there to be a plastic experience,” says Jacqui.

“It was very much decided that, if children were going to build their resilience and take risks and problem solve and do all of those things that help with their physical and cognitive development, we needed to not provide a playground but more a discovery and learning facility, and that’s what it is.”

So how does playing with mud and sticks help build resilience?

Well, it’s a chance for kids to challenge themselves and take risks. There’s no instructions to tell you what to do, so you can set your own tasks and try and solve your own problems.

For example, if you’re building a cubby house, there are many ways you can challenge yourself. Can you make a door that opens and closes? Can you tip water on your roof and make sure it doesn’t leak?

Overcoming each problem builds resilience and encourages creativity.

Creating future custodians

When you’re talking about a nature play area, you can’t ignore the benefits to nature.

Kids experiencing the natural world means kids learning to appreciate the natural world. Things you can see and touch are things you want to protect.

And that’s what kids do at Rio Tinto Naturescape Kings Park when they play in the water of the new Paperbark Creek and explore the treetops on the new Python.

“If we want children to be our custodians of the environment in the future, well, they have to have developed their empathy during their formative years,” says Jacqui.

“Because if there’s no knowledge, there is no empathy, and without that, there is no action to protect so it’s vitally important for the environment.”

By teaching kids through play how to respect and care for our natural environment, we can ensure it’ll be in safe hands for generations to come.

And who knows? Maybe you’ll find some serenity there too!

This article was originally published on Particle. Read the original article.

Mammals are innately playful. Our large brains and complex social structures require that we learn vast amounts of information in childhood to help us thrive in adulthood. How do mammal children learn all of this?

They play.

But it’s not just any play. According to researchers, the most valuable play for normal human development is free, unstructured play. In a Scientific American article, scientists report that free play “is critical for becoming socially adept, coping with stress and building cognitive skills such as problem solving.”

Despite these benefits, natural, free play—the kind most of us had as kids—is rapidly disappearing. According to a 2005 study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, childhood free play declined by 25% between 1981 and 1997. The catalyst for this drop in free play, according to the study, was an increase in time children spent in structured activities.

Childhood play deprivation is not without consequences. Psychologist Peter Gray, who studies play and childhood development, writes that “over the past half century we have increasingly deprived children of opportunities for free play, and over that same period we have seen dramatic and continuous increases in all sorts of emotional disorders in children.”

Despite this alarming trend away from free play, most parents are not clamoring for its return. According to a newly released Gallup study, parents acknowledge that free play “fosters creativity and problem-solving,” but they do not prioritize these qualities.

In fact, the study found that “child-led, independent indoor play ranks near the bottom of the priority list for both children and parents.” Self-confidence, social skills, and academic skills were the top three priorities for parents with children ages 10 and younger.

Parents in the Gallup study placed a high value on structured, purposeful play activities—such as organized sports and educational programming. In contrast, these parents reported that their children place a higher value on screen time—perhaps one of the few remaining outlets children have for unsupervised playtime.

The good news is that both parents and children in the study value outside play; but parents reported that weather (too cold, too hot, too rainy), and fear of sending children outside without adult supervision, were the top two barriers to more unstructured playtime outdoors.

The Gallup report concludes: “Many parents may not recognize the positive role that unstructured, child-led play can have on their children’s development, despite the scientific research linking this type of play to the development of problem-solving skills, social cooperation, resiliency and creativity.”

In the accelerating quest toward early academics, organized activities, and purposeful play, we may be losing sight of the innate and time-honored benefits of free, unstructured childhood play.

The mounting focus on childhood success and academic achievement at ever-earlier ages may result in children who are less creative, less collaborative, and less emotionally resilient than they were a generation ago. As parents, we should fiercely protect and preserve our children’s free playtime, prioritize unstructured, unsupervised play, and encourage them to go outside—even in the rain.

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Image Credit: Pixabay

This post Why Free Play is Disappearing in our Culture was originally published on Intellectual Takeout by Kerry McDonald.