Child care center redefines playground

Movement focuses on ‘natural’ outdoor spaces to help kids learn, interact

Lyla Tustison, 18 months, and teacher Miranda Bell play in a sandbox June 24 at the new nature playground at the Helen R. Walton Children’s Enrichment Center in Bentonville. The renovated playground for infants and toddlers encourages sensory discovery and development of motor skills through interaction with the environment.
Lyla Tustison, 18 months, and teacher Miranda Bell play in a sandbox June 24 at the new nature playground at the Helen R. Walton Children’s Enrichment Center in Bentonville. The renovated playground for infants and toddlers encourages sensory discovery and development of motor skills through interaction with the environment.

BENTONVILLE -- It didn't take long for Landyn Carr, 17 months, to tap the silver metal bars of a small xylophone when it was time for his class to play on the new outdoor playground for infants and toddlers at the Helen R. Walton Children's Enrichment Center.

The gentle clanking of the xylophone broke the silence when the class of seven 12- to 18-month-olds entered the remodeled playground that the center unveiled last month. The xylophone is a permanent fixture in a grassy area of the playground and includes a pair of plastic beige mallets.

The new outdoor ground, a "natural playscape," is the result of two years of planning and fundraising by the nonprofit child care center, executive director Michelle Stephens said.

"It's like getting back to grandma's backyard," Stephens said.

Remodeling the playground took about five weeks and required manually hauling out concrete 12 inches deep in a 2,400-square-foot space, Stephens said.

In place of what was a slab of concrete, a chain-link fence and plastic playground equipment for sliding and climbing are now mostly grass with a gazebo, sandbox table, the xylophone and a set of drums. A pathway of recycled tires leads to a brick walkway that takes children to a tall open-air cottage. Short, skinny arborvitae trees nearby provide hiding places for children, who are still visible to teachers.

The center raised $50,000 for the project through corporate grants, donations and from parents and their employers, said Stephens and Sunny Lane, the center's development director.

The cost was high because of the labor involved in removing the concrete and some of the materials used, Stephens said.

Proposed safety changes

Stephens said she is concerned that children's exposure to the outdoors is limited with the increased use of technology.

"We're limiting the creativity of young children and shortening their attention spans," she said.

She was inspired by research on the effect of nature on children. The staff trained in creating outdoor spaces without large play structures and read a book, Natural Playscapes by Rusty Keeler, for inspiration.

Stephens said she has sent more than 200 copies to other centers across Northwest Arkansas through a technical assistance program. She hopes more centers will make a similar shift.

The new playground also fits with proposed changes for outdoor playgrounds in the state's minimum licensing standards for child care centers, she said.

State regulators for child care providers are not mandating natural playgrounds, but proposed changes to licensing standards suggest alternatives to the use of large, expensive pieces of equipment, said Tonya Williams, director of the Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education.

"When you go to a playground, children will sometimes congregate or not even use that really big, expensive playground," Williams said.

Decisions about what to provide children on outdoor playgrounds are left to providers, Williams said.

Williams said she likes the idea of incorporating natural elements into playgrounds because they encourage children to think and to use their creativity. Children could paint on art easels outside or lie on big quilts and look at the clouds.

When slides and swings remain, the proposed standards increase the depth of materials -- such as sand, wood chips or pea gravel -- that are placed underneath elevated structures to prevent injuries, Williams said. The current standards require a minimum depth of 6 inches for most materials, and the division proposes a minimum of 9 inches for materials other than shredded or recycled rubber. The materials must be in place at least 6 feet in all directions of the structure.

David Griffin, the division's associate director, anticipates the update to minimum licensing standards will be complete by early 2015. Alternative activities suggested in the proposed standards involve sandboxes, art easels, playhouses and nature walks.

Most centers have typical playground structures, but some child care providers are studying other options when those large pieces need to be replaced, Griffin said.

"Equipment can be very expensive," Griffin said. "You have a lot of safety concerns."

Lack of nature

Natural playgrounds provide children opportunities to experience nature, such as sitting under a tree, scooping sand or making mud pies, said Mary Rivkin, author of The Great Outdoors, first written in 1995 and then rewritten this year. Children can play with acorns dropped from oak trees or see the helicopterlike seeds from maple trees twirl.

Slides and swings are good for children, she said, and some natural play environments include a slide built into a hill.

She attributes the recent movement toward natural playgrounds to the publication of the book Last Child in the Woods in 2005 by Richard Louv, a former columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and co-founder of the Children & Nature Network.

Last Child in the Woods discusses research about the importance of nature to healthy childhood development, according to the author's website. Louv links a lack of nature in the lives of children to obesity, attention disorders and depression.

"He has made people really aware that children have lost this, and we need to restore it," said Rivkin, who lives in Bethesda, Md., and who is an associate professor of early childhood education at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County.

Some nature centers have started preschools that focus on the outdoors, and "forest kindergartens" have emerged in Washington state and Massachusetts, where children spend much of their days in the woods, Rivkin said.

But many educators in early childhood education, which includes teachers of infants through third-graders, aren't convinced that children are learning when they play, Rivkin said. The increased pressure to perform on state reading and math tests in elementary school has led some preschools to spend less time outdoors in favor of drilling children on skills indoors.

"There's a counterpush," she said. "Children learn through play. They organize their thoughts through play."

Providing natural play areas outside has drawn interest, but most child care centers are housed in buildings, with the children taking a walk to the nearest park, Rivkin said.

At the Helen R. Walton center, Miranda Bell, one of two teachers for the 12- to 18-month-old class, has noticed a difference since the new playground opened. Before the change, Bell said children often would just walk around the playground, and it did little to encourage them to use their energy.

The children interact more with the new playground, she said.

"They've been a lot more curious, adventurous, more willing to try different things, especially the music," she said. "They're more calm, and I feel like they've gotten more energy out."

On that day in June, the children had ventured to every corner of the playground. Landyn Carr and Gabby Graham, 15 months, were playing peekaboo through railings on opposite sides of the open-air cottage.

Landyn made his way to the other side with Gabby and stayed a few seconds before darting off to a hiding place he found behind a nearby tree.

NW News on 07/06/2014

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