Play-Space Making for Children by Nature: Functional & Dynamic Analyses of a Nature School

Children, everywhere around the world, are deprived of their basic right to play. More than half of these children are urban dwellers who have limited access to outdoor and natural play areas, whose indoor environments are injected with technological attractions that keep them occupied in a sedentary life. This play deprivation is prompting a global reaction towards what the American play historian Joe L. Frost calls a “contemporary child-saving movement” that aims to save children from a “dual crisis:” decrease of outdoor play and alienation from nature. Studies demonstrate the importance of contact with nature, either by bringing nature into the urban environment or by taking children out to nature’s wilderness. However, the question is: What are the play-space principles that allow natural environments to afford children with play opportunities of developmental value?This descriptive case study utilizes a sensory ethnographic approach to observe the interaction of children with the natural environment at The Native School, a nature school in Carlsbad, California. Data is collected in intervals for six months to consider the impact of dynamic and cyclical processes of nature on play. The collected data is coded and analyzed using multiple lenses. The “functional approach” by the environmental psychologist Harry Heft, is used to categorize the observed play affordances into a “functional taxonomy.” Secondly, the non-linear dynamic theory is used to identify dynamic play-conducive aspects of nature: transformation, organized complexity, diversity, and ecological attunement. These play-space making principles can guide a biophilic approach to designing play-conducive and developmentally beneficial environments.