Portland Playscape Park Project
Wow! Check out this great new video about a great new project we are working on in the city of Portland, OR. My playscape partner Leon Smith is leading it and working with loads of kids on the design doing field trips, brainstorming, drawings, model building and more. Exciting stuff!!
Playscape Build…in Action!
It’s playground building season again and this time I’m down in Atlanta, GA working with the amazing Rukia Rogers to create a wild space for city kids at her soon-to-open childcare center, The Highlander School. We’ve got carpenters, concrete water feature-makers, tree specialists, children’s garden workers, and a load of volunteers all coming together to ...read more
It’s Willow Hut Building Time!
That’s right folks: early spring is the perfect time to plant the willow hut you’ve been dreaming about. If you live in the northern hemisphere this means now! Hooray! Ready to build? Here is the How to Build a Willow Hut piece from my book Natural Playscapes. : ) The best way to get the ...read more
East Atlanta Playscape DESIGN!
hey y’all – check out our fun new design for The Highlander School in Atlanta, started by the amazing Rukia Rogers! We’ll be doing a volunteer construction day in 2 weeks – if you’re in the neighborhood stop by. The more the merrier! (and yes: those are SHEEP you see grazing!!!!)
Adventure School meets The Anarchy Zone!
So if you remember, I’ve been working with local friends to create a day-a-week traveling “forest school” for our preschool-age kids — “Adventure School” . Each week we pick a different family’s land to visit where the children can explore, play, create, construct, balance, and build fires. We’ve visited forests in fall, creeks in summer, ...read more
Adventure School Group – in session!
Friends and I have been dreaming of starting an adventure school and this week we began the first Tuesday of the Adventure School Group’s 2012-13 school year. Yay! Inspired by forest schools and nature kindergartens we are starting with a one-day-a-week morning adventure session rotating between various locations. (some families live by a creek. others ...read more
Earthplay Water Tower
Here it is! One of our new Earthplay Water Features: the WATER TOWER! For the past year I’ve been working to create simple, durable water play items that people can add to their natural playscapes. I have a friend with a large stand of Black Locust trees which are perfect for children’s play areas: beefy, ...read more
Anarchy Zone: one, TV: zero.
Here’s a glimpse at some of the funky fort building happening at the Anarchy Zone at the Ithaca Children’s Garden. Notice the negotiation between the girl in white and her mom to stay (inside the den) a half hour longer. At around 1:40 of the video the mom says “this half hour is instead of ...read more
Brooklyn Swarm Build TIMELAPSE!
Hee hee – fun times in the big city. Here a group of spirited volunteers got together to plant themselves a hillslide. Nice! Shoveling, pickaxing, gathering free woodchips from a local cemetery, light carpentry and heavy comradery added up to a fun day of work and a great new 4′ hillslide planted in the community’s ...read more
Montessori PLAYSCAPE DESIGN
Here’s the current project I’m working on at a wonderful Montessori school in Newport News, VA. Located in a business park, the current play area is on top of an asphalt parking lot. Well, let the transformations begin! When I visited earlier this year the kids and staff shared amazing ideas and visions for their ...read more
