The Experience of Life Itself

Prior to the printing press, most people were illiterate. Books were still produced, but only by educated elites, mostly monks and other religious types, although there were also secular scholars, like Plato for instance, who engaged in the laborious and time-consuming process of writing their own books by hand.

By and large, these books were not written to be read by individuals, but rather as a core feature of an educational process that involved someone reading their own handwritten manuscript to a roomful of younger monks (or other scholars) who would essentially take dictation. These students would then, when it was done, own their own book, which essentially qualified them to "teach" it to others.

Naturally, this process didn't produce exact copies of the original book, but rather versions of the book. Spelling, for instance, wasn't the rigid right-or-wrong thing it is today, but rather a kind of creative process by which these scholars attempted to record the words they were hearing using the newfangled phonetic alphabet, a technology that reduces the universe of sounds humans can make to 26 symbols.

But it wasn't just spelling. Each "copy" of the original, which more often than not wasn't the original at all, but rather a copy of a copy of a copy, introduced misunderstandings, re-interpretations, improvements, and new ideas, added by each individual making their version of the manuscript. No one was grading them on accuracy. Indeed, these early books were produced in the spirit of the oral tradition that involved people telling and retelling stories, each in their own way.

In the centuries before Johann Gutenberg began printing Bibles, "the scriptures," as Marshall McLuhan writes in his book The Gutenberg Galaxy, "had none of (the) uniform and homogeneous character" that we moderns associate with it. The technology of mass printing, mass production, turned this, and every formerly "living" manuscript into a standardized, "finished" product.

Of course, the printing press was a driving force behind mass literacy, but in the process it turned manuscripts into a kind of uniform packaged commodity that removed the learner from their active role in their own learning through books.

In many ways, the great educator John Dewey was working to, as McLuhan puts it, "restore education to its primitive, pre-print phase. He wanted to get the student out of the passive role of consumer of uniformly packaged learning."

Likewise, that's what we play-based preschool educators are attempting to do. While so-called "education reformers" seek to force literacy and other academics onto our youngest citizens through standardized curricula, play-based early childhood education lays the foundation of active participation by children in their own learning. Just as those ancient scholars literally took a hands-on role in creating their own books, we want our students to get their own hands dirty, to experience the world beyond the limits of linearity, standardization, and 26 symbols.

It could be argued, as McLuhan did, that "the highly literate Westerner steeped in the lineal and homogeneous modes of print culture has much trouble with the non-visual world of modern mathematics and physics" precisely because of this kind of standardization. When I learn about indigenous worldviews, views shaped outside Western standardization, I'm often startled by how much their understanding mirrors those of modern mathematics and physics. It makes me wonder if being highly literate in one way makes me illiterate in others.

This is not to dismiss the good that Gutenberg's printing press brought the world, but rather to emphasize that it, like all technology, limits us in some ways even as it expands us in others.

Today, we fret about smart phones and other screen-based technologies. We worry that they are changing us. We especially worry that they are changing our children. 

Let there be no doubt, our worries are well-founded. 

Prior to the invention of the phonetic alphabet, nearly every Greek person could recite their own version of Homer's epic poems (The Iliad and The Odyssey). There may have been an historic Homer, but by the time the words were written down, the original version had long since been transformed by the telling and re-telling. "Homer" was, in essence, an invention of everyone. Today, as a direct result of the printed word, almost no one can recite Homer from memory. The technology of literacy obliterated our ability to keep these poems alive in oral form. I now keep books containing a standardized version Homer on my bookshelf instead of in my head. As a result, Homer is much less "alive" to me than it was to those ancient Greeks. 

I have books on my shelf that are the modern standardized versions of the manuscripts those monks and scholars transcribed in the sixteenth century, but let there be no doubt, there is nothing "active" or "hands on" about these tired, old classics. Of course, when I gird myself and actually read those books, I find that they are full of great and forgotten wisdom, but because they're typeset, unchanging and unchangeable, for all eternity, they feel dead.

As a play-based preschool educator, I view the early years as a time for children to experience the world before the smartphone, before the printing press, before the alphabet. I have no illusion that they will ever truly know the world without those technologies, but this time is a window in which they have the opportunity to get their hands dirty without the limitations that these technologies impose on humans. 

Almost every child, for instance, memorizes entire books long before they are able to read. They turn the pages as if they're reading, but the words they speak aloud are words they know because they have heard them. When they do this, they are engaging in the oral tradition.

Almost every young child goes through a phase in which they believe that the world disappears (or they disappear) when they close their eyes. We standardized adults find it a charming misperception, but this is exactly what modern cognitive psychologists tell us happens when we close our eyes: the world as we perceive it doesn't exist when we aren't perceiving it. It's our brains that assemble all those photons into comprehensible visual phenomenon. It's mind-blowing to us, but for a young child it's an obvious reality. When they do this, they are engaging with both advanced science and indigenous wisdom.

Almost every young child delights in mathematics. At the end of the day, as I survey the playground and classroom, I find evidence of impromptu sorting, sequencing, and patterning, which is the essence of all mathematics. Yet, the more distant children become from this kind of hands-on learning, the more confusing and frustrating they find math, with most of us deciding math isn't for us even before we're out of elementary school. Preschool children delight in math because they've experienced it with their own hands, heads, and hearts.

Jonathan Haight (The Anxious Generation) and others make strong psychological and sociological cases against smartphones and other screens for young children. Early childhood educators have long known that most preschoolers are simply not developmentally equipped for formal literacy instruction, not to mention directive academic instruction, and that to attempt to impose that on them is a waste of time at best, and potentially harmful. 

I don't disagree, of course, but the primary reason that I'm suspicious of technology like screens and formal literacy instruction in the early years is that every technology tends to standardize, changing children in ways that limit their learning capacity in often unforeseen and regrettable ways. 

These early years are a unique opportunity for new humans to engage the world as we've evolved to engage it. The technologies will always be there, but this is the only opportunity any of us have to put our hands on the world before it is standardized, commodified, and packaged. It's the one time we have to play, learn, and deeply understand before we've been changed, forever, by our technologies. 

John Dewey famously wrote, "Education is not a preparation for life, education is life itself." This is what I strive to offer to young children: the experience of life itself. And that, at least for this precious time, means, to the degree possible, without the colonization of technology.

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If you're interested in transforming your own space into this kind of learning environment, you might want to join the 2025 cohort for my 6-week course, Creating a Natural Habitat for Learning. This is a  deep dive into transforming your classroom, home, or playground into the kind of learning environment in which young children thrive; in which novelty and self-motivation stand at the center of learning. In my decades as an early childhood educator, I've found that nothing improves my teaching and the children's learning experience more than a supportive classroom, both indoors and out. This course is for educators, parents, and directors. You don't want to miss this chance to make your "third teacher" (the learning environment) the best it can be. I hope you join me! To learn more and register, click here.

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!

Not as a Break From Learning, But as the Essence of What it Means to Learn

Kleo

I often watch the Great British Baking Show, a competition program that good-naturedly pits amateur bakers against one another. I don't bake myself, but I find the show relaxing. After 13 seasons, there are no surprises, the jokes are predictably corny, and the contestants, hosts, and judges seem like kind, bland, well-intended people. Each episode runs about an hour. It's been years since I've made to the end of one before dozing off. In other words, it's a program I choose to watch when the goal is an early night.

Recently, however, I chose to watch a German revenge thriller called Kleo. I've never seen anything quite like it. It is complex and strange. I was so eager to know what was going to happen next that I was up half the night.

In other words, the first show tends to turn my brain off, while the second definitely turns my brain on. In the most basic vernacular, I would say that I've grown bored with the baking show, while the thriller offers me something new. There was a time when I found GBBS more stimulating, when I might watch several episodes back-to-back, but the novelty has worn off.

In Christine Caldwell's book Bodyfulness. She writes:

"Researchers have found that the learning process begins when the nervous system, which monitors our inner and outer environment largely below our awareness, senses a contrast . . . This novelty wakes up certain parts of the brain, which then focus attention on the new stimuli and gather sensory data about that new thing . . . if it creates a contrast with what we are used to, then our conscious brain lights up and we start focusing our senses toward that new experience. We consciously take in the new experiential data, and if we feel sufficiently drawn to it or emotionally invested in it, we will commit this new experience to memory, which is another way of saying that we have just learned something. This also explains why we have difficulty learning things that we don't care about."

Novelty is an under appreciated aspect of how humans are designed to learn. I often think about how I learned to drive a car. As a 16-year-old, I really cared about learning to drive. The first time I got behind the wheel of our family car, however, I nearly drove into a ditch. In the beginning, the novelty, or contrast with what I was used to, was rather extreme. I had to concentrate on everything -- which pedal to press, operating the turn indicator, my speed and direction. But as I committed these new experiences to memory, as I learned to drive, I found that I needed to commit less and less conscious attention to the routine tasks to the point that I could carry on conversations, fret about homework deadlines, or anticipate the weekends. Some people have become so "bored" with the process that they text message or watch videos while driving. It's such a problem, in fact, that we spend millions a year on public service campaigns designed to remind people to pay attention as they drive.

We are constantly surveying our environments in search of novelty. Our first filter is whether or not the new thing poses a danger. After that, however, our next filter is whether or not this new thing is in some way relevant to us. Is it interesting? Confusing? Exciting? Useful? Is this new thing or stimuli or experience or person something I want or need to understand or learn more about? If so, then learning is a natural self-motivated process. 

If our brains determine it is not relevant, however, which is the case with a large percentage of the crap we're taught in school, then learning becomes a heavy lift for both teachers and children. Since we've decided that the hierarchy gets to decide what the children must learn, and by when, we drain the process of the natural motivation triggered by novelty and relevancy. We then have to refill it with a system of rewards and punishments. We scold teachers to to make otherwise boring stuff "relevant," pitting them against Mother Nature. And worst of all, when a child can't learn what we want them to learn, we set them to tasks of mind numbing repetition and rote memorization.

School is not typically set up around the concept of novelty. On the contrary, our idea of school tends to be one of predictability and uniformity. Even our curricula tend to be based on the idea of slowly building learning one step at a time, meaning that we rarely create the contrasts that our brains are designed to seek out as opportunities to learn. This is probably why children seem most "alive" (often interpreted as misbehavior or distraction) when the tedium is interrupted by field trips, substitute teachers, or broken water mains. It also probably explains why recess is many children's favorite part of the day: this is the one part of their day where they are free to pursue novelty, not as a break from learning, but as the essence of what it means to learn.

What if instead our schools were set up as environments in which novelty was allowed to fulfill its natural role in learning? What if our classrooms, playgrounds, and other learning environments were beautiful, child-centric places in which children were free to explore, through their curiosity, the contrasts that motivate them? These are among the questions we will be asking ourselves in the 2024 cohort of my course for educators, parents, and directors called Creating a Natural Habitat for Learning (see below to learn more and register). What if we allowed learning to be the natural self-motivated process is was meant to be?

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If you're interested in transforming your own space into this kind of loose parts learning environment, you might want to join the 2025 cohort for my 6-week course, Creating a Natural Habitat for Learning. This is a  deep dive into transforming your classroom, home, or playground into the kind of learning environment in which young children thrive; in which novelty and self-motivation stand at the center of learning. In my decades as an early childhood educator, I've found that nothing improves my teaching and the children's learning experience more than a supportive classroom, both indoors and out. This course is for educators, parents, and directors. Group discounts are available. You don't want to miss this chance to make your "third teacher" (the learning environment) the best it can be. Registration closes this week. I hope you'll join me! To learn more and register, click here.

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!

"How Many Times Have I Told You . . ."

A friend recently purchased a new home. The first thing she did was paint the walls, because, as she said, the old color depressed her.

We all know that our surroundings can have a significant impact on how we feel and even behave. And this is even more true for young children.

A long unobstructed hallway “tells” children to run.

A mobile hanging from the ceiling says to jump, or climb, in order to reach it.

Furniture arranged in a circle suggests a race track.

A room that echoes, urges children to shout.

Sand and water say, "Dig!" and "Build bridges!"

In frustration, we say things like, “How many times have I told you not to run in the hallway?” because, indeed, we’ve said it countless times, while the hallway itself is telling children just the opposite. No wonder they often look so confused when we scold them.

Our classrooms, playgrounds, and homes are in constant communication with the children, but the best learning environments are ones that engage in a two-way dialog. 

As an educator, a big part of my job is considering what the learning environment is "saying" to the children. And it's not just how the furniture is arranged. It's everything that isn't human, including temperature, lighting, schedules, and even my educational philosophy. I begin my day before the children arrive, working with my environment – “the third teacher” – to make sure that we are on the same page. When we can offer children the kind of safe and beautiful place in which they are free to engage, in which the messages they receive are consistent, and where learning – not behavior – stands at the center, we are offering children what I call a natural habitat for learning.

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If you're interested in transforming your own space into a full-capacity learning environment, you might want to join the 2025 cohort for my 6-week course, Creating a Natural Habitat for Learning. This is a  deep dive into transforming your classroom, home, or playground into the kind of learning environment in which young children thrive; in which novelty and self-motivation stand at the center of learning. In my decades as an early childhood educator, I've found that nothing improves my teaching and the children's learning experience more than a supportive classroom, both indoors and out. This course is for educators, parents, and directors. You don't want to miss this chance to make your "third teacher" (the learning environment) the best it can be. I hope you join me! To learn more and register, click here.

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!

Even Our Words Can Be Loose Parts

"No climbing to the top!"

When our daughter was in kindergarten, her school installed an amazing rope-and-steel climbing structure. The kindergartners were forbidden from climbing to the very top, which meant that adults were always hovering around the thing, "reminding" the children when they got too high. 

One day, I asked her if she was loving the new climber. She replied, "It's kind of in the way. No one plays on it." When I asked her why, she just shrugged, "It's just not fun."

Yesterday, I posted some thoughts on The Theory of Loose Parts. Appropriately, it is an idea that has emerged from the field of architecture about how the best learning environments are those in which we have permission to shape and manipulate our surroundings, and the things found within our surroundings, to suit our needs, ideas and curiosity.

It's a theory that's generally thought of in terms of the physical environment, but no matter how loose the parts, no matter how flexible the space, if the environment does not grant permission to engage freely, then the children, as loose parts theorist Simon Nicholson puts it, will still be cheated.

That's what happened at our daughter's school. The adults, in their concern about safety (or perhaps liability), had sucked the joy out of it. They would have been better off not installing the thing at all. Or installing a shorter one. Or, the way we did it at Woodland Park, not have a climbing structure at all, but rather provide the materials -- scraps of wood, shipping pallets, car tires, ropes -- from which the children could build their own "climbers."

And at our school, that's what the children did. None so high as the one on our daughter's kindergarten playground, of course, but always just the right height for the children creating it. Not only that, these impromptu structures were never in the way because the moment the kids were done with it, the parts were on the move, being put to other uses. 

But this didn't happen just because we provided the parts. It wasn't even just because they were "loose." This kind of self-motivated loose play can only happen when children know they have permission to follow their curiosity.

At our daughter's school, the adults specifically forbid a certain type of exploration, but much of the time we let children know they don't have permission in more subtle ways. 

For instance, if you listen to the things adults are saying to children at play -- "Come here!" "Slow down!" "Be careful!" -- we hear mostly commands. Research finds that 80 percent of the sentences adults speak to young children are commands. And an environment full of commands is not an environment of permission.

We also hear a lot of school-ish questions, "What color is that?" "How many marbles do I have in my hand?" "Do you know what letter that is?" Implied in these types of questions is the idea that the adults know better than the children what to think about. But even more open-ended questions like, "What do you think will happen if you put one more block on your tower?" tend to steer children into adult approved "places" in which the parts are no longer loose. When we ask questions, we compel children to divert from their own course and onto the one we've chosen for them.

There are times for commands and questions, but if our goal is to create the kind of loose parts environments that allow children to learn at full-capacity, then we are well served to consider even our words as loose parts. When we strive to replace our commands and questions with informational statements -- "That color is red," "I have marbles in my hand," "This is the letter R" -- we are offering children information, facts, that they, like with any loose part, can use or not use.

Instead of the command "Get in the car," we might state the fact, "It's time to go" and let them do their own thinking. Instead of the command "Be careful!" we might say, "The ground below you is concrete and it will hurt if you fall on it." Instead of school-ish questions to which we already know the answers we might instead simply speculate aloud, "I wonder why the sky is blue," leaving it there for the children to consider . . . or not. 

Of course, we might also choose to just not say anything at all which is when our "third teacher," the environment, often does her best work.

We will be discussing this and much more in my course, Creating a Natural Habitat for Learning, a 6-week deep dive for educators, parents, and other caregivers who want to transform their classrooms, homes, and playgrounds into the kinds of "third teachers" that give children the permission to engage with the world through their curiosity, to experience the joy of self-motivated learning, and to become critical thinkers. Registration is now open for the 2024 cohort, click here to learn more. I'd love to see you there!

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If you're interested in transforming your own space into this kind of loose parts learning environment, you might want to join the 2025 cohort for my 6-week course, Creating a Natural Habitat for Learning. This is a  deep dive into transforming your classroom, home, or playground into the kind of learning environment in which young children thrive; in which novelty and self-motivation stand at the center of learning. In my decades as an early childhood educator, I've found that nothing improves my teaching and the children's learning experience more than a supportive classroom, both indoors and out. This course is for educators, parents, and directors. Group discounts are available. You don't want to miss this chance to make your "third teacher" (the learning environment) the best it can be. I hope you join me! To learn more and register, click here.

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!

Is This Stealing Fun From the Children?

In 1971, architect Simon Nicholson wrote an article for a magazine called Landscape Architecture entitled “How Not to Cheat Children: The Theory of Loose Parts.” Perhaps it wasn’t the first time that the phrase “loose parts play” was used, but it was this manifesto that in many ways kicked things off. In the half century since its publication, the idea has grown, first slowly, and then suddenly in recent years as more and more early childhood educators have embraced Nicholson’s theory a part of their play-based programs.

That the theory emerged from architecture is fascinating to think about. It echoes the work of Reggio Emilia founder Loris Malaguzzi who was at about the same time postulating that children had three teachers: adults, other children, and the environment, the environment being the primary purview of architecture. Nicholson’s theory, as he phrased it in that original article:

In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it.

Nicholson was not talking exclusively about early childhood, but about educational environments in general. He included playgrounds and classrooms in his discussion, but also places for all ages, like museums and libraries. His big idea was that we are most inventive and creative when allowed to construct, manipulate, and otherwise play with our environments. He argued that when we leave the design of spaces to professionals, we are, in effect, excluding children (and adults) from the most important, and fun, part of the process. We are, in his words, “stealing” it from the children.

Even if we haven’t consciously adopted the theory of loose parts play, every early childhood professional, even those working in otherwise highly structured environments, knows this to be true. None of us would, for instance, build a block structure for the children, then expect them to learn anything by merely looking at it and listening to us lecture. We know that the children must take those blocks in hand, must both construct and deconstruct, must experiment, test, and manipulate. We also know that their play, and therefore their learning, is expanded as we add more and varied materials to their environment.

The theory of loose parts applies the principles of the “block area” to the entire environment (which is, not coincidentally, the focus of my 6-week course, Creating a Natural Habitat for Learning) encouraging us to let go of our ideas of how a learning environment is supposed to be and to instead fill it with variables, things that can be moved, manipulated, and transported. This, as Nicholson points out, is where creativity and inventiveness live. It’s important to remember that his theory continues to be a radical one, even as aspects of it are becoming more mainstream. This is about more than tree cookies and toilet paper tubes and clothes pins. It’s about more than old tires, shipping pallets, and planks of wood. At its core, the theory of loose parts is a theory about democracy, about self-governance, and the rights and responsibilities of both individuals and groups to come together to shape their world according to their own vision.

The world is always ours to shape and when we are not shaping it, it is shaping us. Nicholson’s insight was that our environment is too often a kind of dictator, one that is restricting rather than expanding our possibilities. As we work with our “third teacher” it’s important that we keep this in mind and always ask ourselves, “Is this stealing the fun from the children?”

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If you're interested in transforming your own space into this kind of loose parts learning environment, you might want to join the 2025 cohort for my 6-week course, Creating a Natural Habitat for Learning. This is a  deep dive into transforming your classroom, home, or playground into the kind of learning environment in which young children thrive; in which novelty and self-motivation stand at the center of learning. In my decades as an early childhood educator, I've found that nothing improves my teaching and the children's learning experience more than a supportive classroom, both indoors and out. This course is for educators, parents, and directors. You don't want to miss this chance to make your "third teacher" (the learning environment) the best it can be. I hope you join me! To learn more and register, click here.

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!

Preschool as a Place to "Finish" Using Junk

Auke-Florian Hiemstra/Naturalis Biodiversity Center

There was a street light just outside the living room window of my second-story downtown Seattle apartment. On top of the light fixture were ugly spikes, fixed there to prevent birds from landing on it. As far as I could tell, it worked. Nearby trees were populated with urban birds, but they left this particular street lamp alone, even as just down the block an un-spiked light was home to a crow's nest for at least one mating season.

Not long ago, I read a fascinating article in The Guardian about corvids, crows and magpies in this case, using strips of these anti-bird spikes to construct their nests in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Scotland. What a stunning example of cross-species nose-thumbing! (If, indeed, corvids had noses or thumbs.)

The magpies seem to be particularly enterprising, building their dome-shaped nests while apparently positioning the spikes to project outward and upward in order to fend-off predators. It's almost like they took a look at our attempts to thwart them, thought "Good idea," and made it their own.

Birds are, of course, notorious for using human garbage in their nest building, just as rats, raccoons, cockroaches, hermit crabs, and other species have learned to thrive on our species' unique genius for producing massive quantities of waste. Homo sapiens have, throughout our 300,000 or so years of existence, always been prone to producing excessive amounts of waste. One of the primary ways anthropologists study our ancient ancestors is to study the kitchen middens (i.e., garbage dumps) they left behind. We don't know why this is the case, but my theory is that as we evolved the ability to perceive the arrow of time (something that physicists tell us doesn't actually exist) we began to prepare for the prospect of an uncertain tomorrow by producing more than we needed today instead of simply living in the "enough-ness" of the ever-emerging present as our animal sisters and brothers seem to do.

When I read this story, I couldn't help but reflect on the children I've observed playing over the decades on our junkyard playground. I always envisioned our school, and our outdoors space in particular, as a place where we "finished" using stuff that was otherwise on the way to the landfill. Just as corvids and other animals cleverly use our refuse, I've found that young children have a special genius for finding remarkable, creative ways to incorporate shipping pallets, old tires, parts of broken toys, containers, wine corks, bottle caps, and other societal garbage into their games. In fact, more often than not, when given the choice, they will prefer the "real stuff" of recycling bins, garages, cellars, and attics to the toys and games specifically manufactured for them. Oh sure, they've been taught to beg for the latest shiny toy and are thrilled to received it as a birthday gift, but we all know that by the end of the day, most children, most of the time, have at least as much fun with the boxes and wrapping paper, the excess we produce in the process of gift-giving.

Again, I don't know why young children, like corvids, so often express their genius through playing with our garbage, but I expect that the reason they prefer the boxes over the toys is that most toys (and most out-of-the-box playground equipment) come with a "script" built into them: there is a proscribed, or "right," way to play with them. Whereas when playing with refuse, children write their own scripts, and that, ultimately is the real story of human learning. 

In these magpie nests made from anti-bird spikes, I see the "nests" that young children create from the odds and ends at hand, the games they invent, and the stories they play using waste to create something new and meaningful. I see the power of a learning environment at work, supporting children to think critically and creatively, rather than directing them according to scripts. I see the opening up of new possibilities rather than the habit of the well-trodden ruts of "because we've always done it that way." I see the transformation of problems into opportunities -- anti-bird spikes into nests.

This is a natural habitat for learning. If you're interested in transforming your own space into this kind of learning environment, please join the 2025 cohort for my 6-week course, Creating a Natural Habitat for Learning (see below). This is the kind of open-ended, real world learning environment in which not just corvids, but all animals thrive, including humans. 

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If you're interested in transforming your own space into this kind of loose parts learning environment, you might want to join the 2024 cohort for my 6-week course, Creating a Natural Habitat for Learning. This is a  deep dive into transforming your classroom, home, or playground into the kind of learning environment in which young children thrive; in which novelty and self-motivation stand at the center of learning. In my decades as an early childhood educator, I've found that nothing improves my teaching and the children's learning experience more than a supportive classroom, both indoors and out. This course is for educators, parents, and directors. Group discounts are available. You don't want to miss this chance to make your "third teacher" (the learning environment) the best it can be. Registration is closing soon. I hope you join me! To learn more and register, click here.

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!

Building a State-of-the-Art Playground (for under $200!)

Awhile back, a reader left a comment on the Facebook page asking, "If I have $200 to make our playground look a little more like your schoolyard, 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. 

In my course Creating a Natural Habitat for Learning (see below) we'll spend six weeks digging into every aspect of this question, and more, but in the meantime, 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.

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