Outdoor Spaces that Celebrate Children's Thinking

In a recent Washington Post story, landscape design researcher Robin Moore suggests in an ideal playscape, "children have intimate contact with nature — trees, rocks, dirt, water. All the while, they are acquiring tacit knowledge, developing an understanding of their environment based on what they can see, do and feel for themselves. A playground is a place where children both escape and prepare for the complicated reality they inhabit."

In the same article, playground designer Nathan Schleicher mentioned observing children play atop an abstract installation with a conventional slide attached. He noticed that the children chose to slip down the sculpture itself instead of using the slide. "You see that, and the next time you make a sculpture, you realize — ‘Oh, if I tweak this angle, this is how the kids are going to want to play with this,’" he says. "A slide has rules. Parents are constantly saying, ‘Hey, only one way down that slide, buddy!’" He laughs. "Instead you can create a slidable moment, and that’s a similar experience, but it’s one that gets to be discovered."

In the Exchange Reflections, "Outdoor Spaces that Support Thinking and Behavior," outdoor classroom designer Jim Wike notes, "The goal for every space used by children (and this includes the indoors as well) should be the creation of a joyful place that supports and celebrates the brilliant thinking of the child rather than of the adults in charge or the designers of the space. Often adults become seduced by the look of a space and forget to ask what benefits it provides for children…The question becomes, what’s the point of designing for children? Is it to highlight our brilliance as designers or to create a canvas for children’s creativity? I choose the latter."

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