Category: Play

Playgrounds

Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) was a visionary sculptor and landscape garden designer whose innovative playgrounds and playground equipment designs are a fusion of earth sculpture and interactive play.

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Isamu Noguchi’s recently restored Atlanta Playscapes serves as a model for playgrounds of the future.

“I think of playgrounds as a primer of shapes and functions; simple, mysterious, and evocative; thus educational.” Isamu Noguchi

The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum has reopened in New York after a renovation. Noguchi viewed the earth itself as the original sculpture medium. He felt that the ground embodies the spirit of creativity that inspired early humans and suggested a way for them to get control of their spiritual existence, to arrange your inner landscape you must sculpt your outer landscape.

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Playgrounds and playground equipment designed by Noguchi were works of art meant to be interactive, suggest activities without precisely demanding them, lead to a physical but creative use of each structure, and invite all levels of participation. Photo by Kevin Noble

Many distinguished educators, child welfare specialists and civic groups had seen the model for the United Nations Playground had hailed it as the only creative step made in the field in decades.

This design for the United Nations Playground was a composite; part garden, part surrealist sculpture and part bas relief on a monumental scale. ''A jungle gym is transformed into an enormous basket that encourages the most complex ascents and all but obviates falls. In other words, the playground, instead of telling the child what to do (swing here, climb there) becomes a place for endless exploration, of endless opportunity for changing play.'' –Noguchi, 1952
This 1952 design for the United Nations Playground was part garden, part surrealist sculpture and part bas relief on a monumental scale. A jungle gym is an enormous basket, that encourages the most complex ascents and all but obviates falls. The playground becomes a place for endless exploration, of endless opportunity for changing play.

His last playground design in New York City’s Riverside Park was the fullest evocation of a playground as an art form, an inviting creative play space that would provide not just interactivity but beauty and a place to sit for people of all ages.

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Riverside Park design that included a large collection of small scale furniture to be fixed in place. Noguchi wanted to create a tiny public realm that would inspire children to use their imaginations. Photo by of Kevin Noble

Marble tree

The Matthias Utinger Marble Tree is an enchanting eco friendly educational wonder.

Six marbles make deeper and deeper notes as they plink plonk down the tuned wooden leaves of the tree, before plopping into the base.

The Wooden Marble Tree is a longtime favourite of the Waldorf and Montessori school systems and was inspired by their principles of constructive play.

It is ethically made, environmentally sound, and nontoxic.

Matthias Utinger is an award winning Swiss designer of educational toys. His glorious invention was nearly lost to us when the original manufacturer went into bankruptcy in 2006. It is now produced by a family company specializing in quality wooden toys.

  • German Design Prize Winner, 2000
  • Hand made Germany
  • Suitable for all people over 3 years of age
  • Melodious tones bring joy to kids and adults alike
  • Brilliant hued leaves transition from yellow to deep green in a lovely rainbow of colors
  • Includes wooden tree with six marbles
  • Gravity makes beautiful music as the included marbles bounce from wooden leaf to leaf

Little Scientists

$4 million has been committed to the Little Scientists program in Australia to inspire three year old and four year old children, through active engagement with the world around them. Young Australians are becoming more numerate and scientifically literate by learning to count with little towers of wooden blocks and blowing bubbles. Nurturing the imagination of each child ensures they will go on to create the prosperity for Australia to remain a first world, generous social welfare net, high wage economy. read more

Activities start with familiar objects and experiences. Each child asks questions, which can be explored rationally. Making connections, drawing inferences, and creating new information are the building blocks for a culture of science and technology to create an innovation nation.

The curriculum encourages the autonomy, self confidence and self esteem of each child, based on the progressive ideas of Friedrich Fröbel, the renowned educator, who developed the Kindergarten concept 175 years ago. The program sparks interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics by encouraging teachers to implement ideas and concepts from workshops, while exploring together with the children in their care.

Source: Little Scientists Australia

The five year olds agree: trees make the wind by shaking their branches. Their teacher does not correct them, but instead asks whether anyone has seen the wind in a place where there are no trees. One boy recalls a visit to the seashore, where the wind was whipping up water and sand with no trees in sight. Another child says that moving cars make fallen leaves twirl. Perhaps, they decide, trees are not the source of a breeze.

Little Scientists marks a departure, says a kindergarten teacher who participates in the programme. “You have to be willing to do something with the kids that might not lead to a result. They will not take something home that they can show their parents.” Teachers trained in the method encourage children to ask questions about natural phenomena and everyday objects. read more

Types of Play

Through play children learn and practice many basic social skills.

They develop a sense of self, learn to interact with other children, how to make friends, how to lie and how to role play.

Types of play

The first four types of play do not involve much interaction with others, while the last two do.

While children shift between the types of play, as they grew up, children participated less in the first four types of play and more in the last two – those which involved greater interaction.

  1. Unoccupied play: the child is relatively stationary and appears to be performing random movements with no apparent purpose. A relatively infrequent style of play.
  2. Solitary play: the child is completely engrossed in playing and does not seem to notice other children. Most often seen in children between 2 and 3 years-old.
  3. Onlooker play: child takes an interest in other children’s play but does not join in. May ask questions or just talk to other children, but the main activity is simply to watch.
  4. Parallel play: the child mimics other children’s play but doesn’t actively engage with them. For example they may use the same toy.
  5. Associative play: now more interested in each other than the toys they are using. This is the first category that involves strong social interaction between the children while they play.
  6. Cooperative play: some organisation enters children’s play, for example the playing has some goal and children often adopt roles and act as a group.

learning to play is learning how to relate to others

Source: 6 Types of Play: How Children’s Play Becomes More Social

The Cube

A box containing eight cubes is the first building gift designed by Friedrich Froebel.

A child is given a cube, whose parts can be easily separated, and put together again with pleasure to restore the original form, a perfect cube.

By moving one cube at a time, a child can also construct of a variety of other forms and patterns.

source: Taking Apart and Putting Together Cubes AIMS

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Buy maple cubes online with PayPal, free shipping to continental USA.

Buy cubes in boxes online with PayPal, free shipping worldwide. Made in Germany from beech wood since 1835 to the original designs of Friedrich Froebel.

Paradise of Childhood

This practical guide to playing with the cubes and other play gifts designed by Friedrich Froebel has many illustrations can be read online

A free digitised version of Paradise of Childhood by Edward Wiebe, Edited by Milton Bradley London: George Phillip & Son Ltd., 1896 is available as a single PDF (74MB) at the Froebel Digital Collection.

Second Gift

The cube was added to the sphere in the second play gift described by Friedrich Froebel in Sonntagsblatt (1838-1840).

Froebel selected the cylinder as an intermediary form between the sphere and the cube.

“It is well to call the attention of each child to one great law, which dominates in nature and thought. Between two things or two ideas relatively different there always exists a third which unites the two others in itself, and is found between them with a certain equilibrium.”

Fundamental law of the connection of contrasts formulated in the Education of Man (1826). Continue reading “Second Gift”

Harlem Children’s Zone

a safe place to learn, play, and grow

The first years of a child’s life are of critical importance to their success.

Parents participate in workshops, where they discuss discipline, developmental milestones, and age-appropriate activities to foster early literacy.

Meanwhile, their three-year-olds play together in small and large groups under the guidance of trained staff, learning socialization skills and having fun singing, doing arts and crafts, and listening to stories.

educating parents on child development and fostering a strong sense of community among participants

Source: The Three-Year-Old Journey – Harlem Children’s Zone

Ball and cube

The first exposition of the ball and cube was printed by Froebel in the Sonntagsblatt of 1838, Nos. 8 — 12.

The meaning and use of play gifts were explained by Froebel in the Sonntagsblatt (1838-1840).

His fundamental law of the connection of contrasts was formulated in the Education of Man in 1826.

“It is well to call the attention of each child to one great law, which dominates in nature and thought. Between two things or two ideas relatively different there always exists a third which unites the two others in itself, and is found between them with a certain equilibrium.”

Already in 1838, Froebel already gives himself to the search for an intermediary form between the ball and the cube, the cylinder.

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source: Papers on Froebel’s kindergarten

The emotional framework of the family already serves as a way of penetrating and understanding the structure of reality. The family supplies this transparency indirectly and in a situational manner.

School education as ‘conscious’ education goes beyond education provided within the family because the functionality of family life is taken further and deepened, rationally and continuously, by teaching and analysis of the structure of things. Thus Fröbel is able to define his educational practice as a ‘conscious’ family life.

When each person understands their living potential through thought, they practise self reflection and make this potential conceptually accessible within themselves, through the process of thought.

Acting according to this insight gives expression to this relationship that is understood within, and so brings together the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ factors of the life of each person.

Each person not merely reflects and acts according to the insight acquired, but also grasps external reality, by understanding the fundamental laws and structure of the ‘external’.

‘Internalizing the external and externalizing the internal means seeking the unity of both in the general external form through which the purpose of of each person is manifested’

Empathy

My dear friend took her adorable young children to the local aquarium recently.

I heard later that an adult in the crowd was so frustrated by their lot in life that they felt justified in bullying her six year old daughter. When my friend came to her daughter’s defense this woman tried to pick a fight with her!

“We are here to lift and enlighten the world. We can and should be a positive force for good. Our children are watching and learning from our behavior.”

Source: You Can’t Fix Yourself by Breaking Someone Else