Tag: outdoor play

behavior · children · creativity · education · environment · learning · Nature

Loose Parts = Creativity. Road Trip to Lithuania Reminds a Teacher to Play

Beth Kelley

This is a great blog post from a teacher re-learning the value of creative free play and specifically outside.

I highly recommend you read the whole post, but for me this sentence summed up the whole experience:

“…As I witnessed these projects I realised that children and adults can only be as creative as their environment allows them to be and that by letting children spend time in a natural environment like the woods or to be surrounded by loose parts, we can but only help them to become or remain creative.”

‘Nuff said.

Read the entire post: Learning for Life: Loose Parts = Creativity. Road Trip to Lithuania Part 3.

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

Nature Valley shows chilling faces of children addicted to technology

Beth Kelley

Okay, ignore that this is a granola company’s commercial.

And they may have cherry-picked to prove a point.

YET…

The fact that even these kids exist is terrifying.

Just watch the video. And cringe. Mourn. Cry. Then go do something about it!

Children are obsessed with technology, and Nature Valley wants us to be afraid. Very afraid.

That seems to be the message of this new ad for the granola bar company, which asks three generations of families: “When you were a kid, what did you do for fun?”

The elder two generations share memories of blueberry picking, sledding, fishing trips, and playing baseball as airy music plays in the background.

But then it’s the younger generation’s turn, and ominous music suggests these kids aren’t exactly frolicking in the grass and soaking in the sunshine. The kids detail that they spend five hours a day texting, emailing, tweeting, browsing the computer, or playing video games as the parents cry or lament the death of the good old days.

h/t via Nature Valley shows chilling faces of children addicted to technology (Mashable).

This is not okay people. So, so, the opposite of okay!

Go volunteer to take your niece or nephew to the park, or go hunt for cool leaves and flowers in the park. Grow a flower or even spider plant and give it to a kid! Take action!

behavior · community · environment · work

Creative Leadership Grows in the Garden

Beth Kelley
English: Photo of Robert Hart's forest garden ...
English: Photo of Robert Hart’s forest garden by Graham Burnett (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Great insight from Tim Brown of IDEO on how playing in the dirt can forge great leadership skills:

Over the years, I’ve given a lot of thought to what gardening, design, and creative leadership have in common.

Gardening is generative, iterative, and user-centered
When designers in our Chicago studio first planted a roof garden, they noticed people were picking and eating the strawberries and tomatoes and leaving the eggplants and tomatillos to rot on the vine. They soon realized that planting a work garden for 60 busy people is very different from planting a home garden for a family of four. Project deadlines simply took priority over cooking, so any plants that took extra steps to prepare were ignored. The next year, the designers planted a “Grab and Go Garden” that contained only fruits and vegetables that could be eaten straight away. This time, more plants were eaten, less were wasted. A good garden, like good design, needs to meet the needs of its users.

Full article:
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130626172846-10842349-want-to-be-a-creative-leader-look-to-the-garden?trk=mp-details-rr-rmpost

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autism · behavior · brain · children · learning · mental health · Nature · play · school

Outdoor Play Helps Improve Autistic Symptoms

Beth Kelley

Reposting this from a fantastic blog Free Range Kids, run by Lenore Skenazy, a huge advocate for letting children be children and just playing, especially outdoors:

Readers — In our desperation to create “smarter” kids, we have practically pinned them to their desks. Now educators are realizing this may be just the opposite of what is best for kids — including those with special needs, as Andrea Gordon writes in Toronto’s TheStar.com (a paper run by my favorite editor-in-chief from back when he and I were at the NY Daily News, Michael Cooke). – L.

It was a crisp March day outside Blaydon Public School when teachers discovered that 4-year-old Alex Wong could spell his name.There were no pencils or paper in sight. Everyone was bundled in winter jackets. Alex, who has autism, was in the outdoor classroom where his special-needs class played and explored for at least an hour every day, alongside 25 kids from the mainstream kindergarten class.

Teacher Sue Cooper noticed Alex march over to a pile of wood, put three sticks in a small wheelbarrow and push it to a spot on the pavement. One by one, he placed the sticks on the ground, forming the letter A. He made three more trips and came back with sticks to make three more letters, which he placed in a row: L, E and X.

Cooper’s jaw dropped. The teachers ran for a camera.

Alex is non-verbal and for a long time, his only interactions had been to throw things or hit. But in the fresh air, day after day, something started to change. Over several months Alex had watched the other children making structures. And that March morning, he was ready to take his turn.

The teachers say his is one example of how daily outdoor time is changing the way their young students — including those autism and other special needs — learn and behave.

Full post.

Obviously more research needs to be done, but there has been strong correlations drawn between outdoor time and decreasing of ADD and dementia symptoms, so it makes sense that putting humans in our natural surroundings would also help other mental disabilities and ailments.

There are a growing number of outdoor preschools, and I’d argue that there should be more outdoor elementary and even middle schools.

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children · environment · happiness · hugs · Nature · neuroscience · psychology

Tree Hugging Now Scientifically Validated – Uplift

Beth Kelley

hugging trees can be good for us

The term “tree hugger” has been applied to people viewed as uber-liberal or too idealistic, however… “it has been recently scientifically validated that hugging trees is actually good for you.”

Research has shown that you don’t even have to touch a tree to get better, you just need to be within its vicinity has a beneficial effect.

In a recently published book, Blinded by Science, the author Matthew Silverstone, proves scientifically that trees do in fact improve many health issues such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), concentration levels, reaction times, depression and other forms of mental illness. He even points to research indicating a tree’s ability to alleviate headaches in humans seeking relief by communing with trees.

The author points to a number of studies that have shown that children show significant psychological and physiological improvement in terms of their health and well being when they interact with plants and trees. Specifically, the research indicates that children function better cognitively and emotionally in green environments and have more creative play in green areas. Also, he quotes a major public health report that investigated the association between green spaces and mental health concluded that “access to nature can significantly contribute to our mental capital and wellbeing”.

full article via Tree Hugging Now Scientifically Validated – Uplift.

I”m sorry the article only looked at research in children, as more and more findings are showing the same improvements in adults from interacting and playing with nature, and even results that some would term “nature deprivation” or as Richard Louv calls it “Nature Deficit Disorder.”

One of my favorite little trivia facts is that there are microbes in soil that induce positive emotions in people, so digging in the dirt actually makes you happier. Plus helps you learn and concentrate more.

Hospital patients with a view of a tree or greenery from their room window were found to heal faster.

 

Those kinds of benefits are for everybody!

While I do feel like it’s important to make sure children get enough outdoor time, I continually want to drive home the message that not only should you encourage children to go outside and play, but adults too. We ALL need fresh air and nature and flowers and bugs and dirt.

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community · culture · environment · happiness · health

Parks, bikeways, other natural playful landscapes are good for the economy

Beth Kelley
English: Ritner Creek Covered Bridge near Pede...
Ritner Creek Covered Bridge near Pedee, Oregon, used as a rest stop during the Watermelon Rides organized by the Salem Bicycle Club (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Happy Friday. I hope you get a chance to go outside this weekend. Not just because it’s good for you, but because it also helps the economy. No really, at least according to one study, and anecdotally, Oregon is seeing  ahuge economic benefit by encouraging outdoor recreation, specifically bikeways and bike tourism:

During a special hearing on bicycle tourism at the House Transportation and Economic Development Committee in Salem, OR, on May 9th, representatives from Travel Oregon released a major new report on the economic impact of bicycle-related travel. The Travel Oregon study, The Economic Significance of Bicycle-Related Travel in Oregon Detailed State and Travel Region Estimates, 2012 (PDF), looked at bike tourism’s impact throughout the state during 2012. The big number — which garnered a headline in The Oregonian and has been adjusted up since our story in March — is $400 million. That’s how much people “involved in bicycle-related activities” spent in Oregon last year.

One key reason for the ascension of bike tourism in Oregon are initiatives like the nation’s first State Scenic Bikeway program.

The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department named two new Scenic Bikeways that same day. They’ve got the right idea about increasing revenue by making their state fun to hang out in!

You can read more about the economic impacts, but it’s so far a pretty effective strategy to promote tourism.

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architecture · community · design · environment · play

Superkilen: Global Mash-up of a Park

Beth Kelley

Using parks and other playful spaces to improve urban neighborhoods and the residents’ lives…

THE DIRT

super1
The nearly mile-long Superkilen park in Denmark is a bold attempt to create a new identity for an “ethnically diverse and socially challenged” neighborhood in Copenhagen, Denmark. An in-depth community outreach process organized by the city has led to a place like no other, with a sequence of plazas that honor different ethnics groups living in the area. Designed by Bjarke Ingels’ firm, BIG, landscape architecture firm, Topotek 1, and artists’ group, Superflex, the massive project also accomplished a lot with a little budget: at just $34 per square foot, the landscape “packs a lot of bang for the buck.” The project, which has recently been all over the design press, also just took home the AIA Institute Honor Award for urban and regional design and an annual design award from Architect Magazine in the “play” category.

The AIA jury, which included Ellen Dunham Jones, author of Retrofitting Suburbia

View original post 821 more words

architecture · play · technology

A Swing Set That Powers An Electric Light With Every Pump | Co.Design

Beth Kelley2 Comments

As kids my friends and I used to imagine creating electricity out of the swings or the merry-go-round. Turns out we weren’t the only geeky kids who thought up that kind of thing:

Swinging is a self-contained pleasure, an activity where the work and reward are one in the same. But for their pop-up installation outside the International Centre for the Arts in Guimarães, Portugal, the art collective Moradavaga added an unexpected twist to the childhood pastime: a little bit of light, powered solely by the motion of the swings themselves.

more via 1 | A Swing Set That Powers An Electric Light With Every Pump | Co.Design: business + innovation + design.

If you could turn any play equipment into a power generator, what would it be? Leave your ideas in the comments below.

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behavior · community · creativity · education · emotion · environment · mental health · play · psychology · Social

Outdoor Play Poster

Beth Kelley

From the nonprofit organization Voice of Play and their host organization, the IPEMA (International Play Equipment Manufacturing Assocation):

This poster is appropriate for any player, whether you are 2 or 92.

What other reasons can you think of to play outside? Leave them in the comments below.

 

community · creativity · music · play · Social

Making a little street music

Beth Kelley

For the past four years, inspired by artist Luke Jerram, donated and painted baby grand pianos have been showing up in London during the summertime. This trend has now started to be picked up in major cities around the world, from Toronto, Canada, to Salem, Oregon.

From Now. Here. This.:

‘Play Me, I’m Yours’, an installation of street pianos created by artist Luke Jerram, is back in the capital for the fourth year. This time, in celebration of the City of London Festival’s Golden Jubilee anniversary, 50 *golden* pianos are popping up across London for three weeks until July 13. They can be found all over the city including Soho Square, St Pancras International Station and Parliament Hill – you may well hear the soft tinkling of the ivories before you see them.

From the Everett City Blog:

Pianos will be out August 1-22, 2012 for the Everett Street Tunes: An Invitation To Jam. Make music in the streets during Everett’s new interactive art project, Street Tunes! Musicians – both professional and novice – are invited to play any of the ten pianos located in downtown Everett.

Everett Street Tunes is an interactive art project, from start to finish, beginning with the commissioning of artists to paint and embellish each piano.

From the source itself, Street Pianos‘ website:

Touring internationally since 2008, “Play Me, I’m Yours” is an artwork by British artist Luke Jerram. Reaching over a two million people worldwide more than 600 pianos have now been installed in cities across the globe, from New York to Sydney, bearing the simple instruction ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’.

Located in public parks, bus shelters and train stations, outside galleries and markets and even on bridges and ferries, the pianos are available for any member of the public to play and enjoy. Who plays them and how long they remain is up to each community. Many pianos are personalised and decorated by artists or the local community. By creating a place of exchange ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’ invites the public to engage with, activate and take ownership of their urban environment.

The pianos are loaned with the understanding that they might not make it back in one piece, but so far in the past four years the most destruction to the pianos has been due to rain or other inclement weather.

Visit the website to find out more about this cool, interactive, playful art project, and locations near you.