Building Your Own Backyard Playground

Awhile back, a reader left a comment on the Facebook page asking, "If I have $200 to make my backyard look a little more like your school, what should I get?"

First off, $200 is a pretty good budget for a project like that, mainly because most of the coolest stuff we have in our outdoor classroom we acquired at little or no cost. 

So here are some suggestions:

Sand or at least someplace for digging. Backyard sandboxes are great, but they're often really too small and too shallow for growing kids. When our community has created playgrounds, we always talk about "full body" sand pits. Sand, while not terribly expensive (around here we get about 60 lbs. for $3), could eat up that whole budget, however, but setting aside a digging area involving just regular dirt is an acceptable alternative.

And, of course, you'll need shovels, pails, and other tools. We use cheap plastic ones. We've tried metal, but galvanized steel buckets are heavier when full and tend to get bent out of shape quite easily in our rough and tumble environment. We do own some metal shovels, rakes, and hoes, but they aren't for day-to-day use even though they would probably make the work go easier. The reason is that our shovels are as often used as "weapons" as for digging, and while they both hurt, getting accidentally brained by a plastic shovel is generally preferred over being brained by a metal one.

Our two-level sandpit wouldn't be itself without a cast iron water pump. You can get a new one for under $50. Our's is mounted on a board that rests atop an inexpensive 30-gallon plastic tub that serves as our cistern. We drilled holes in the lid for the uptake pipe and for a hose to refill it when it's empty.

A natural extension of the pump, of course, are lengths of guttering. Ours are cut into 6-foot sections although we have a couple 10-footers stashed away for special uses. If you spend more than $200 on a pump set up, you've spent too much.

Using the gutters as loose parts is much preferred over a permanent installation. Not only does that allow kids to change the direction and flow of water as their needs demand, but we can use the gutters for other purposes, like down at the art station where we employ them in painting on adding machine tape with balls, mini-pumpkins, and/or toy cars and trucks.

Much of the stuff that makes our space "look" the way it does are things on which you really shouldn't have to spend anything. You can usually pick up logs and tree rounds, for instance, from a neighbor who has recently removed a tree or done some major pruning. Tree services will often give you some if they know its for kids.

Our two boats have both been donations. You just have to get the word out and wait.

It's important to remember, I think, that nothing lasts forever. It's good for kids to spend time playing on, with, and around things that are in various stages of deterioration. So when we got our new metal boat, we simply left the old, rotting, wooden one in place, where it is slowly "sinking" into the sand.

And speaking of loose parts, you shouldn't have to spend a penny on those.

Most of the toys, broken things, cartons, containers, boxes, and whatnot that we're ready to toss out, spend at least a little time in the outdoor classroom before reaching their final resting place in the dumpster.

"Loose parts" is just another name for junk.

Counted among our favorite loose parts are those larger bits that can be hoisted about by teams of kids.

Planks are incredibly versatile.

Ours range in length from 4-8 feet. These have all been donated by families and others looking to make space in their garages.

It's best if you can get new wood without a lot of knots in it: kids really like to experiment with the springy nature of the planks. Some of these have lasted us 3+ years being outdoors year round.

Shipping pallets are a great addition to planks. Ours were all acquired for free. We used to just grab them from the side of the road, but since learning that there can be some chemical and biological hazards associated with pallets, we've started making sure to only use those that are stamped with "HT," which stands for "heat treated." You don't want the chemically treated pallets around kids. We also avoid pallets that have been used to transport food products.

Old car tires are also staples around our place.

And we have a couple of galvanized steel garbage cans. They not only make great, loud, "thunder drums" and hidey-holes, but we often commander them as impromptu table tops.

Other free and inexpensive things we like to have around include brooms . . .

. . . ropes . . .

. . . pulleys . . .

. . . chains . . .

. . . roles of plastic fencing . . .

. . . pvc pipe . . .

. . . old bicycle inner tubes (in this case, we used them to make a sort of catapult) . . .

. . . pipe insulation . . .

. . . cardboard boxes . . .

. . . hoops . . .

. . . stick ponies . . .

. . . chalk . . .

. . . and lots of stuff to just bang on.

As far as more permanent things, I think it's nice to have some sort of playhouse. Again, ours was a donation from a family whose kids had outgrown it, although one of our grandfathers is building us a new one as we speak. A playhouse can be as simple as a cardboard box, however.

It's also nice to have some sturdy tables and chairs. We've purchased ours and they were quite a bit outside the $200 price range, but that's because we're a preschool with over 65 kids playing out there every day. Cheaper stuff, and even cast-off items with the legs cut down will work for backyard purposes. You can often find workable stuff at Goodwill.

And our space simply would not be what it is without a garden. Ours is just a collection of raised beds, but you don't even need that. 

Pots, soil and few seeds will suffice.

We've also re-puposed an old sensory table as a compost/worm bin. 

None of these things are expensive and that's how a child's play space should be. If there is any great truth about an outdoor classroom it's that it should be continually evolving and adapting, a hodge podge of old and new and everything in between. I am not exaggerating when I say that we acquired everything discussed in these photos for not a lot more than $200, other than the furniture and the sand, although there are work-arounds for both of those. If you're just outfitting a backyard, you can probably do it all for less.

That said, it's a backyard, which implies neighbors. As educational as these kinds of spaces are for children, these wonderlands of loose parts, dirt, rocks and compost, these bastions of junkyard chic, they are often perceived as eyesores by the uninitiated. Before going too far, you might want to save up to build a fence.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

-->

"Sea World" Research

Most of the research supporting the teaching of "academics" in preschool can be compared to a marine biologist who goes to Sea World to study orca whales. Yes, you might figure out how to get them to jump through a higher, smaller hoop, but it doesn't tell you anything meaningful about orca whales. This is a metaphor Carol Black first used, but it's so apt I've adopted it as my own.

On the heels of yet more evidence that the Common Core federal public school curriculum is failing to prepare kids for the mercenary objectives of college and career, and as a follow-up to my post from last week, Five-Year-Olds "Falling Behind, I wanted to share with you what appears to be a perfect example of research that studies how children learn in captivity rather than in their natural habitat, then purports to draw legitimate conclusions from it.

In fairness, I've not read the full study because I didn't want to pay for it, but I reckon that this article entitled Preschool Academic Skills Improve Only When Instruction is Good to Excellent from the website of the purveyors of this particular piece of caged-rat research hits what the researchers consider the high points.

"Preschoolers in center-based care showed larger gains in reading and language when their teachers spent more time supporting their learning -- but only if the quality of instruction was in the moderate to high range."

"Children showed larger gains in academic skills when they attended more than on year of Head Start, had fewer absences, and spent more time in reading and math instruction."

"The lowest quality programs are going to have to change a lot in order for us to likely see the kind of improvement in language and academic skills that provide the foundation for succeeding in school . . . Children in our study showed the largest gains when teachers interacted with children frequently in engaging activities that were designed to teach those language and academic skills deliberately."

"Having a sensitive caregiver is really important for young children -- but it probably isn't sufficient alone for promoting academic skills. There has to be content and an intentional approach to instruction."

The jailers' cruelty embedded in these quotes has me shaking with rage. These are 2-5 year olds they are talking about. Every professional preschool teachers knows that children this age should be spending their days playing under the supervision of sensitive adults rather than being subjected to "more time in reading and math instruction," then being tested by "moderate to high" quality task masters. University of Cambridge researchers recently completed an exhaustive survey of all the research available on how young children learn -- not how they best learn in the captivity of schools, mind you, but how young children learn when allowed to lead their own education:

Studies have compared groups of children in New Zealand who started formal literacy lessons at ages 5 and 7. Their results show that the early introduction of formal learning (e.g., "academics") approaches to literacy does not improve children's reading development, and may be damaging. By the age of 11 there was no difference in reading ability level between the two groups, but the children who started at 5 developed less positive attitudes to reading, and showed poorer text comprehension than those children who had started later.

That's right, high pressure academic instruction of the sort advocated for in this "Sea World study," especially when it comes to literacy, tends to cause children to not only dislike reading, but to become poorer readers overall.

Anthropological studies of children's play in extant hunter-gatherer societies (e.g., child's more natural habitat) . . . have identified play as an adaptation which evolved in early human social groups. It enabled humans to become powerful learners and problem-solvers . . . Neuroscintific studies have shown that playful activity leads to synaptic growth, particularly in the frontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for all the uniquely human higher mental functions.

Indeed, playing princess, climbing trees, building with blocks, and socializing with peers are superior to the sort of direct instruction required to get orcas to jump through those damned hoops:

. . . (S)tudies have also consistently demonstrated the superior learning and motivation arising from playful, as opposed to instructional approaches to learning in children. Presence play supports children's early development of symbolic representational skills, including of literacy, more powerfully than direct instruction. Physical, constructional and social play supports children in developing their skills of intellectual and emotional "self-regulation," skills which have been shown to be crucial in early learning and development. Perhaps most worrying, a number of studies have documented the loss of play opportunities for children over the second half of the 20th century and demonstrated a clear link with increased indicators of stress and mental health problems.

And that is the greatest danger of this sort of Sea World research: it will be used to argue for subjecting our children to the cruelty of even more desk time, more direct instruction, more testing, and less play, than they already have. If you came to me to suggest that you were planning to subject young children to extra stress, the increased possibility of mental health problems, and lower academic achievement, I would call you abusive. This sort of Sea World research does exactly that.

Within education research, a number of longitudinal studies have demonstrated superior academic, motivational, and well-being outcomes for children who had attended child-initiated, play-based pre-school programmes . . . an extended period of high quality, play-based pre-school education (is) of particular advantage to children from disadvantaged households.

Often, the proponents of academic preschools, will argue that we need to do it to help the disadvantaged "catch up," but the facts betray them. What they are arguing for, in reality, is making the lives of the orcas at Sea World even more miserable than they already are. All children have a right to their childhood: not only will they learn better, but they will be happier and that is a much higher goal that college or career, especially for preschoolers.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

-->

Germinating The Seeds Of "We"

We've just completed the first week of our summer program. It's a fairly laid-back, multi-age, half-day, outdoor affair, attended mostly by families who are currently enrolled during the regular school year or who are alumni, although some of our sessions include a large number of newcomers as well. And even though it's a "summer camp," we still operate as a cooperative, which means I still get a healthy contingent of parent-teachers with whom to work. 

Superficially, what we do isn't so much different than what we do throughout our school year -- play -- but I've found that the nature of two-week sessions involving an ever-changing cast of children fundamentally changes my role. Or rather, it means that I'm pretty much always in "first weeks of school" mode. Even kids who have been coming to Woodland Park for years take awhile to warm up. Some of the kids already know one another, some of the parents do, but this is definitely not the same community that the children left only a week ago. There are older and younger kids, familiar faces perhaps, but not necessarily friends. We never go indoors except for the bathrooms and sinks. The schedule is different.

Adult organized games like "What Time is it Mr. Fox?" and "Red Light, Green Light" are rare occurrences during the regular school year, but I find them a useful tool for bringing a group of children together as they begin to feel things out.

Parents often remark on being surprised that their child who has been coming to our school for years is suddenly clingy, but I'm not. Yes, the "stuff" (sand pit, water pump, workbench, garden, swings, etc.) is the same, and the teacher is the same, but the different people make it a different place.

I've always had a teaching style that in many ways reflects my more youthful experiences as a baseball coach. I find myself often more focused on "the team" than the individuals, which is, I think, somewhat anathema to the focus of most of our schools, which tends to be mostly on individual accomplishment (test scores, grades, etc.). For me, we as a collective, as a unit, as a team, as a community is always at the forefront of what I do, even during the regular school year, but especially during these summer sessions. Of course, I have the luxury to do this because of our cooperative model, with plenty of adults around to support the children with their individual needs and challenges, which leaves me to put more of my energies into community-building.

During the first couple days this week, most of the kids, even the seasoned vets, were doing a lot of milling around, playing alone or in pairs, and the play I observed was mostly superficial, with a tendency to bounce from one thing to the next without getting to much depth and with little connection with one another. Whenever I sat down, be it in the sandpit boat, on the swings, or just in a pile of wood chips, kids gathered around me. I didn't call them, but they came anyway, looking I guess for an anchor or a touchstone or something, so I told stories, sang songs, or made art, leaving spaces for them to join in, to interrupt, to make suggestions. I think of it as a way to start our conversation, the one that would, given enough time and space, grow into what we call "our community." 

On Monday and Tuesday, despite the arguably more exciting lures of our playground, there were times when a dozen kids or more would choose to join these impromptu circles. My goal then is to gradually let the children take it over, usually by growing increasingly quiet, then by inching my body away to another spot. The larger group typically disperses, but there are always a few kids who stay behind to keep the game, whatever it is, going.

We've been coming together since Monday, but it wasn't until yesterday, Thursday, that we finally had a day that felt like Woodland Park. Sure there are still some kids figuring out how they fit in, but there were larger teams of them playing together, digging trenches in which to flow water, inventing "let's pretend" games, and making plans together for the coming minutes, hours, and days. By the end of next week, we'll have the beginnings of a real community, one that doesn't really need me, but then they will scatter to the wind and we will restart the process of germinating the seeds of we once again.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

-->