Globe and Mail article about Natural Play

How kids can reconnect with nature on the playground

DAVE MCGINN

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Published Friday, Nov. 23 2012, 6:51 PM EST

Natural playgrounds are a growing movement. (Bienenstock Natural Playgrounds)

An earlier generation of kids may have spent all their free time playing in the woods, but in today’s world of helicopter parenting and stranger danger, letting their children do the same is unthinkable for many parents.

Now, park designers and officials as well as school boards are trying to reacquaint kids with nature, not by sending them into the forest, but by creating what are called natural playgrounds.

“Connecting to nature is something that’s becoming more and more important everywhere,” says Adam Bienenstock of Bienenstock Natural Playgrounds, a design and construction company based in Dundas, Ont.

Mr. Bienenstock designed Vancouver’s first natural playground, built at Grandview Elementary School in 2011, as well as what promises to be Edmonton’s first, at Donnan Park. The company also has projects under way in Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton and Fort McMurray, Alta.

This week, the Toronto District School Board rejected a plan to sell off playground land to help pay for capital projects, reaffirming the importance of wide-open spaces to children’s development.

The movement to swap swings, slides and monkey bars for boulders, grassy hills and trees is gaining ground across Canada, the United States and other countries. Advocates say natural playgrounds prompt much more imaginative free play, foster social interaction and cut down on bullying, and encourage the sort of risk-taking some experts say overcautious parenting has been unintentionally blocking.

Their emergence can be traced back to the 2005 book Last Child in the Woods, by journalist Richard Louv. He coined the phrase “nature deficit disorder,” cautioning that cutting children off from nature was linked to rising rates of obesity, depression and attention deficit disorder.

With more people than ever now living in urban environments, there is a greater recognition of the importance of connecting kids with nature through play. In the United States, natural playgrounds have been created in Chicago, Boston, Portland, Seattle, Phoenix and New York in recent years.

The concept has reached such a critical mass that the Natural Wildlife Federation and the Natural Learning Initiative at North Carolina State University have partnered to create the Natural Play & Learning Area Guidelines Project, to outline a road map for the design and management of natural play environments.

Natural playgrounds typically include five elements, according to Mr. Bienenstock: rolling topography, boulders, logs, pathways and large trees and shrubs. The specifics are usually reflective of local surroundings: “This is the ‘100-mile diet’ of playgrounds.”

Traditional playgrounds decide for kids in advance how they will play: Swings are for swinging; slides are for sliding. But in a natural playground, it is not immediately clear how their elements should be incorporated, so it is up to kids to use their imaginations.

“That’s the whole theory behind it,” says Scott Belair, the lead instructor for the Canadian Playground Safety Institute.

Research has also shown that natural playgrounds alter the way children in them relate to one another.

“In a commercial playground, usually what ends up happening is that the most athletically gifted child ends up choosing the game and running the playground,” Mr. Belair says. “With a naturalized playground, kids tend to play more co-operatively. … There’s a wider variety of play elements involved than just who can climb the fastest or the highest.”

Link to the full article (It's a great read!)

Survey Results

The survey results are in!!  We are excited to have received almost 150 families respond to the survey about the Playground Enhancement Project. And of those respondents, 78.5% of families believe that the PAG should move forward with this project. 

Please click on the link below to browse through the results.

Survey Monkey Results


Where do we go from here? First we need to get PAG approval to begin fundraising and collecting donations on behalf of the project. Next we need to form a committee to get things rolling. Finally, we need to start TALKING about the project and supporting the positive responses we received from families in our community about this project. 

Queenston School Gym Expansion is a great example of what our community can do when it works together. Thanks to $295,000 of fundraised money, our community was able to fund an expansion of 800 square feet so that our children, youth and seniors would have an indoor facility for structured activities. 

We want to do the same, only our project is all about outdoor, unstructured play and our square footage is 75,000!!! So get in touch with us and join a committee that is going to change how our community plays outside!

rhsplayground@gmail.com



  

Playground phasing plan and cost estimate

Below are two images. The first shows the proposed phases for the playground. Combined with the Master plan from an earlier post on the site, you can get a clear idea of what items are included in each phase.

Click here to open the Landscape Master Plan

Below is the cost estimate for each phase of the project. The landscape architect firm is responsible for tendering all works to qualified suppliers and evaluating the submissions.

Landscape Master Plan for the Playground

Click here to open the full size Landscape Master Plan.

Project Focus

We want to state right from the beginning that this project isn’t just about making our playground look nicer or “greening” the community. It isn’t only about making River Heights a better place to live. While these goals will be achieved through the project, this is also what we want: We want to offer kids more – more than simply a rectangular field, an oval track, a rectangular hard top, and an old playground structure. We want them to feel good about themselves, build self-esteem and improve their physical and mental well-being. We want them to be able to explore, jump, spin, run, catch, roll, slide, toboggan, sit, talk, act, imagine, hide, seek, balance, and sweat.

Here are some ideas about what kids currently do and what we expect to see once Phase 1 of the playground is done:

                                                         

Current recess activity	2014-2015 recess activity
One child pulling another on a toboggan across a flat field until he or she gets tired (or bored because its not fast enough).	Three or four children on one toboggan going down a hill; working out who pulls the toboggan back up.
Kids shovelling snow so that they can build a shelter to play in and protect them from the wind.	Kids shovelling snow so that they can make snow forest among the berms and trees in the aspen forest.
Children huddling together by the doors to protect from the wind; they are laughing and talking and waiting to go inside.	Children sitting on berms or logs or boulders, unconcerned about the time or temperature, and just enjoying the fresh air.
Teacher playing soccer after school with the children.	Teachers outside using the amphitheatre as an outdoor classroom; teacher and students investigating the soil or insects that live in the ditch; students checking the weather station.
One play structure where classrooms must follow a schedule as to when they are permitted to use the structure.	Multiple play structure areas allowing all children to have a structure on which to play, whenever they want to play.
Children playing soccer and football on the field, leaving anyone not playing soccer with little green space on which to play.	Children setting their own challenge games, using the rope obstacle course, spinners, hill, boulders, and log bridges.

While River Heights residents may have easy access to the new Nature’s Playground at Assiniboine Park, but most of the playground is officially closed during the winter months. These are the months when children need to be outside, need to be more active and need interesting activities to keep them warm and engaged. The rest of our community offers little in terms of a connection to nature. We want people to think: “let’s walk over to the playground” so that we can move away from the idea of  “let’s get in the car and drive”. We drive to work, drive to the grocery store, drive to the gym and drive to the playground. We need to find ways to reduce the amount we all drive our cars, so our focus on building a playground in our own backyard is to help reduce the amount of driving that families do to get to awesome playgrounds or places to play. It should be as easy as shoes on, close the door and walk/bike/skate to the school.

Our focus is on all types of play – physical, natural, and creative, but we are the environment committee, so our focus is also on the environment. Our process in planning the project to date has been to ensure that any design has little negative impact on the environment, but that it can play a role in helping the environment. The plan includes rain gardens, bio swales, natural prairie grass turf, and native plantings, including trees. Currently we have very little shade, and shade is important as it helps reduce the impact of the drying of the sun on grasses and plantings. Shade is also critical for the children, as it protects them from the direct sun and the strong winter winds.

   

Previously, small projects were undertaken at the school to beautify the grounds or deal with soggy field issue, all done with an unclear long-term vision. We realized that to transform our playground, we needed a professional plan – a Master plan.  Following a sound selection and planning process, we selected the local landscape architect firm Scatliff +Miller + Murray Inc. (SMM). We chose SMM based on their expertise in creating innovative playgrounds such as Assiniboine Park Children’s Garden and École St. Avila. We recently shared the Master plan at a Robert H Smith Open House where students, teachers, and families came to see the vision for the school grounds and to make suggestions. As the Master plan is a large project in itself, we have divided it into 4 phases. We are now at the point where we are ready to start Phase 1.

Our goal is to have our schoolyard be an exciting, fun environment for children of all ages that they can be proud of and take ownership of. We know that active, creative children are happier and more likely to succeed in school. We want to provide them with more opportunities to develop positive relationships with peers as well as interact with a natural environment.