Category: environment

children · environment · happiness · health · learning · mental health · Nature · neuroscience · play

IS PLAY THE KEY TO ECO-ACTION? : Children & Nature Network

Beth Kelley

Environmental Psychology and conservationists have, for awhile now, been advocating the importance of letting children get out and play in and with nature to educate them on the value of preserving their environment and benefiting from natural surroundings. It’s nice to see pediatricians also start to embrace and advocate for the need for everyone, including children, get outside and get dirty.

Dr. Lawrence Rosen writes that throughout his practice, seeing children on a daily basis, “I’m often reminded of Winslow Homer’s 1872 painting, “Snap the Whip,” depicting boys playing with abandon in a field outside their rural schoolhouse.”

So eloquently portrayed is the simplicity of another time, kids out in the natural world for no other purpose than to play, freely and without a care in the world.Contrast this with contemporary schoolyards with their meticulously designed jungle gyms and artificial surfacing, often empty throughout the day as more and more schools abolish recess or replace free play with highly structured, adult-supervised activities. I’ve realized, as I see increasingly anxious and depressed children come to my office looking for guidance, that the answers often lie not in my prescription pad but outside my window.

One very recent publication from Dr. Kirsten Beyer and associates at the Medical College of Wisconsin described the influence of green space on mental health outcomes, concluding that “higher levels of neighborhood green space were associated with significantly lower levels of symptomology for depression, anxiety and stress” and that “’greening’ could be a potential population mental health improvement strategy in the United States.”

read more from Dr. Rosen via IS HAPPINESS THE KEY TO ECO-ACTION? : The New Nature Movement.

anthropology · behavior · brain · children · community · culture · education · environment · happiness · health · learning · play · psychology · Social

Plug for the NGO Right to Play

Beth Kelley

I tweeted about this short film yesterday, but I really feel like this is worth giving some space on the blog for.

The value of play is important for teaching life skills like conflict resolution and collaboration, health lessons, healing from trauma, building community and just overall survival as a child and human being, the work this organization does seems simple but is hugely important.

This short video highlights some of the incredible impact that play can have on a child, or group of children.

You can also visit the organization’s website at Right to Play.

Play matters!

 

architecture · creativity · design · environment · Nature · play

Giant Living Sculptures At Atlanta Botanical Gardens’ Exhibition | Bored Panda

Beth Kelley

Beautiful sculptures, and a great way of being playful with gardening and making gardens more engaging for everyone.

Mosaiculture is an excellent art form for those among us with the green thumbs and the space to do it. An excellent example of this complex but beautiful artistic process would be the “Imaginary Worlds” mosaiculture exhibition at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens – these elaborate and massive green structures create mystical and fantastic worlds that are lush with living foliage.There is more to these amazing works of living art than meets the eye. Most of them begin with a steel frame of some sort, which is covered with steel mesh. This mesh is then covered with sphagnum moss and soil, which is seeded with all sorts of plants. Underneath the mesh, a network of irrigation channels supply water to the plants on the surface, helping them grow.

more via Giant Living Sculptures At Atlanta Botanical Gardens’ Exhibition | Bored Panda.

architecture · children · cognition · design · education · environment · learning

Are Teachers Distracting Students With Bad Interior Design? | Co.Design | business + design

Beth Kelley

These findings make sense to me and yet also don’t.

 

Image credit: Carnegie Mellon University

Few environments feature such a cacophony of decor as the elementary school classroom. Colorful bulletin boards, scientific posters, state maps, and student artwork tend to cover nearly every inch of wall space. Yet a new study on classroom design from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University suggests that all that educational flair may not be all that great for getting kids to learn.

The study, carried out over two weeks, examined 24 kindergarten students who were taught six lessons on topics they had not yet learned in school. Half the lessons were taught in a highly decorated classroom environment, with posters and art all over the walls, and the other half were taught in a classroom with no decoration.

CMU’s researchers found the kids spent more time off-task and were more distracted when the room was brightly decorated, and they tested better on subjects they learned in the sparser classroom compared to the ones they learned in the more visually stimulating environment.

Elementary school children typically stay in one room all day, so classroom decorations don’t necessarily match the subject matter they’re learning at any given time. If they’re sitting in front of a U.S. map, they’ll be looking at that all day whether the current lesson is on geography or math. This study, though very small, adds to previous research from the same psychologists showing that visual stimulation that’s irrelevant to on-going instruction can distract kids.

more via Are Teachers Distracting Students With Bad Interior Design? | Co.Design | business + design.

The study doesn’t go on to offer any ways to necessarily improve the classroom design, although the article does give other links discussing it.

Nature can be fairly visually cacophonous, so what is it about classroom designs that are so distracting? I also wonder how much of their distraction is from an unnatural learning style, and then other more engaging things to look at. That is not an attack on the teacher, I’m just skeptical whether any human is capable of sitting in one room for 6-8 hours, with a couple of lunch breaks, and concentrate the entire time, for an extended period of time. Even grown-ups have a hard time doing that, and suffer when they try to sustain that for too long.

What are your thoughts? Leave them in the comments below.

behavior · children · environment · health · play

The Value of Unstructured Play Time for Kids – Pacific Standard: The Science of Society

Beth Kelley

This is a nice study that looks at the value for kids, but unstructured creative and/or play time is important for adults AND kids.

German psychologists find people who were allowed to play freely as children have greater social success as adults.

There has been plenty of hand-wringing in recent years about the “overscheduled child.” With after-school hours increasingly dominated by piano lessons, soccer practice, and countless other planned activities, many of us have a nagging sense that kids are missing out on something important if they have no time for unstructured play.New research from Germany suggests these fears are justified. It finds people who recall having plenty of free time during childhood enjoy high levels of social success as adults.

A team of three psychologists from the University of Hildesheim, led by Werner Greve, conducted a survey of 134 people. Participants were presented with a list of seven statements and reported the degree to which they conformed with their own childhood experiences that is, ages three to 10.

read the rest of the article via The Value of Unstructured Play Time for Kids – Pacific Standard: The Science of Society.

children · creativity · design · environment · learning · Nature · play

Can This Industrial Designer Get Children Back Outside? | Natural Start

Beth Kelley

Nice to see toys being introduced that work with already existing toys (sticks!), and encourages kids to go find their own sticks and go play in nature.

As an inductee to the National Toy Hall of Fame, the stick doesn’t need much improving as a classic toy. For as long as there have been children and sticks, sticks have served as a versatile toy in outdoor play. But connecting sticks takes a bit of ingenuity.

Enter Christina Kazakia, a design student with a mission. As she explains, “I designed these flexible silicone connectors as part of my graduate thesis in Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design. My goal was to create prompts to engage children with their surrounding natural environment.” Called Stick-lets™, these connectors help small children build big structures like forts, teepees, lean-tos, or other creations.

Find out more about the toy and her kickstarter via Can This Industrial Designer Get Children Back Outside? | Natural Start.

behavior · brain · cognition · creativity · environment · happiness · health · Nature · work

Why You Should Take Your Work Outdoors

Beth Kelley

Happy Friday. I got to start off my work day sitting on my back patio drinking coffee. Here’s why more people should do the same.

Do you feel stifled by the four walls of your office or cubicle?

There’s a reason for that.

Trapping ourselves indoors has created what health experts call a “nature deficit disorder” — depression or anxiety resulting from too little time spend outside. Getting outdoors can do great things for your health. Reducing stress, lowering blood pressure and improving immune function are among nature’s health benefits. What’s more, incorporating elements of nature into your workday can also give your brain a boost, resulting in increased productivity, focus and creativity.

Harvard physician Eva M. Selhub, co-author of Your Brain on Nature, says a drop of nature is like a drop of morphine to the brain, since it “stimulates reward neurons in your brain. It turns off the stress response which means you have lower cortisol levels, lower heart rate and blood pressure and improved immune response.”

Turning off the sensors that are involved in the stress response allows the higher brain centers to be accessed, resulting in increased concentration, improved memory, greater creativity and productivity and reduced mental fatigue. While Selhub says spending 20 minutes a day outdoors is recommended, studies have shown even looking at photographs of nature can deliver some of the same cognitive benefits as physically being outdoors. A 2008 study at the University of Michigan showed students who looked at photos of nature performed better on tests of attention and working memory than those who looked at photographs of urban scenes.

More reasons, and tips how, via Entrepreneur Magazine

community · creativity · environment · music · play

Musical Bike Rack Designed To Add Joy To Boring Infrastructure

Beth Kelley

Even just a little play mixed in to your daily activities can make a huge difference.

Last summer, artist George Zisiadis started playfully reimagining parts of the urban infrastructure that we usually ignore. What if parking meters could become gumball machines, or subways could turn into rollercoasters? How could the everyday parts of the world around us be more fun, and spark more creativity in the rest of our lives? He published his ideas in a series of sketches called Urban Imagination, and soon was inspired to bring some of the sketches to life.

Up first: A gong hanging under a U-shaped bike rack that acts as an impromptu musical instrument. “I ride my bike around the city a lot, so I’m always using bike racks,” Zisiadis says. “There’s just this very funny space underneath them, empty and unutilized. It was an opportunity for micro-interaction: The things that we do every single day, all the time, are the largest opportunity for positively affecting people’s lives.”

Photo by Burker Seyfert
Photo by Burker Seyfert

More via Fast Co.Exist

architecture · community · creativity · environment · health · learning · play · youtube

Switzerland Opens its first Parkour Park – YouTube

Beth Kelley

The sport of Parkour is usually focused on finding your own path in non-planned environments. But having a space designated specifically for exploration is great for both beginners and veterans alike to practice seeing routes and trying new skills.

Traceurs and play advocates all over the world have been trying to start up parkour parks in various cities, so this is really exciting to see another one finally come to fruition after the hard work of local citizens. Well done!

Switzerland finally got their first Parkour park. The past 2 years the team “Parkour Luzern” was planning so hard to realize this project and finally Joel helped them to design and build the park. Jesse, Guilaume and Joel went there for training and now we are proud to put out the first video from this awesome location.

Grandstand Parkour Park

via Free-Z at Switzerland’s first Parkour Park – YouTube.

behavior · environment · happiness · health · mental health · Nature · play

Philadelphia Zoo lets tigers stretch legs on trail – The Washington Post

Beth Kelley3 Comments

THIS. IS. SO. COOL!

Not just for visitors, but for the animals!

tiger shot

Visitors to the Philadelphia Zoo might want to beware of stray cats: A new enclosed passageway allows lions and tigers to roam outside their exhibits.

Humans, though, can safely gawk at the predators traveling along Big Cat Crossing. The protected, open-air path snakes above the felines’ habitat to an archway over the zoo’s main promenade and ends at a viewing spot along a lake.

The concept for the catwalk unveiled Wednesday stems from the increasingly common practice of animal rotation, which lets animals take in new stimuli while visitors encounter them in unexpected places.

more via Philadelphia Zoo lets tigers stretch legs on trail – The Washington Post.

Big carnivores are roamers, and prefer to have lots of space to patrol. Being able to get a cat’s eye view of their zoo is so much healthier for them, and gives them the enrichment and psychological and physical space they need to stay healthy.

I had heard about the plans to create this space, so it’s really nice to see it implemented and in action.