A recent article in the online magazine Co.EXIST discussed a study that found children benefit from being in natural environments, even if the environment is designed to appear natural but is actually human-made: Dawn Coe, an assistant professor in the Department of kinesiology, recreation, and sport studies at the University of Tennessee spent time observing […]
Play Based Learning in Australia is sharing a poster that captures the play manifesto of its children; how awesome! After the overwhelming reaction to the success of the Australian Children’s Play Summit held in Melbourne on May 17th and 18th 2012 Play for Life Australia is kindly making available a copy of the Play Manifesto […]
What a great series from Co.Exist and Fast Company: play grounds, and other structures, that harness the energy of people’s movement. This may be the first time employees are actively encouraged to move around all day. Kids have boundless energy. What if that energy could be put to some use besides just running around and […]
Happy Friday! I hope you get a chance to go out and play this weekend. Speaking of play, here is another great find from Milan’s Design week (remember the edible mini furniture from earlier this week?). This exhibit of design focused specifically on children’s spaces, with a focus that was very playful, creative, and also […]
I love the fact that playgrounds are incorporating the stuff that kids love to play with the most – dirt, rocks, and sticks! Children won’t find new monkey bars and bright plastic play structures at the upgraded Donnan Park. Instead, the aging playground at 9105 80th Ave. will become Edmonton’s first “natural playground,” part of […]
A lot of parents freak out about how to provide enriching environments for their children and help them grow, from music lessons to early reading to math flash cards. In one of those “well duh” books, two neuroscientists, Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang remind us it doesn’t take all that much… Babies may look helpless, […]
Flashing lights or a “Slow Children” sign are common sights around schools, but now a local school has put in a “a huge, round, sea-themed mural right smack in the middle of South Graham Street in South Seattle,” to alert drivers to pint-sized pedestrians: Some of the kids who had helped earlier talked about what […]
This call for paper submissions from the The Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past got me thinking about how actively children used to participate in the daily household and economic life of families, from general maintenance like sweeping the kitchen to vital income by helping during harvest time. Children used to have […]
I’ve been reading some very depressing stuff today – about one school that doesn’t allow anyone over the age of 6 to have recess, kids not feeling protected from their tormentors, and so on – so I needed a pep talk. Adora Svitak’s TED talk did just the trick.
The Education system in the U.S. has reached a pretty low low right now. This is currently being displayed on the big screen in the documentary “Waiting For Superman.” Film-maker Davis Guggenheim “follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth, and undertakes an exhaustive review of public […]
