How kids can reconnect with nature on the playground
THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Published Friday, Nov. 23 2012, 6:51 PM EST
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.”
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