Video
A big thanks to Edutopia for including us in their 5 Minute Film Fest: Encouraging Kids to Get Outdoors! The Importance of Playing with Fire (Literally) is lined up with eight wonderful pro-child videos including Project Wild Thing and the one and only Sesame Street:
We are officially one degree of separation from ELMO, wee!!
Play on. x
Watch this! Vibrant, funny, gnarly and real -- a delightful kindred spirit. Play on!
Seen in full at the NYTimes.
You know you're playground obsessed when you spend the morning watching a series of Nils Norman lectures.
The contrast between what the mainstream provides for children, and what they create when left to their own devices is telling us something. Shouting to us! Listen! Listen!
Junk playgrounds are not a new idea. Check out this 70's era short film featuring Lady Allen of Hurtwood, a legend in the adventure play movement. Hear her explain, in her own words and without apology, the 'what' and 'why' of adventure play.
Perhaps Lady Allen's greatest legacy is expanding adventure play opportunities to children at all levels of ability. The language in this film is dated, but the ideas still seem ahead of their time.
Enjoy!
We're all drawn to fire, aren't we? It's warm, magical, turns objects to ash... it sparkles, crackles... is just cool. (Or, "mint," as I'm learning to say.) When we were kids, I remember melting candles on the porch for hours on summer afternoons - lighting the wicks and dripping wax onto wooden boards pulled out of the garage.
Fire play is a common and important element in adventure playgrounds. Above is a time lapse test from an afternoon at the fire pit - a hypnotic and beautiful bit of space on The Land.
I nearly fainted when I saw this delightful 1 minute film at the True/False documentary film festival. Such whimsy and wonder inspired by the possibilities provided by an adventure playground.
Fortrait #3: "Adventure Fort"
"Adventure Fort" was part 3 of a 4-part series of "fortraits" by Encyclopedia Pictura. Here are the others. They are a delight.
Fortrait #1 "Driftwood Cabin"
Fortrait #2: "Camping Rafts"
Fortrait #4: Subterranean Breakfast Nook
Don't they make you want to look around? Pick up a stick? Tie it to another with some grass? Stack rocks? Paint? Draw? Look to the sky? To try something silly? Delight in creating? Yes. Yes, they do. Me too.
I wonder what a playworker might say about the play drive here - that feeling that the films trigger inside of us. If I had to guess, based on what I've learned from them all so far, I might say that these films give us permission to play. And permission, it seems, is sometimes all it takes.