Playhouses

Sometimes a playhouse is in order and if you aren't in a DIY mood check out Awesomeplayhouses on etsy. 

How adorable is this General Store?

A classic doll house.

Rocking Moto

Check out this Heirloom Motorcycle from Etsy's hi4heather.  Each moto is handcrafted and made to order.  Rock on. . .

Sleeper Cell Hotel

We're obsessed with indoor/outdoor camping options and Suzanne Husky's Sleeper Cells have us smitten.  Perfect little play environments!

(Via Little Paper Planes)

This is what we are talking about!

 After three years and 7.8 million dollars, NYC  has something that we can all be proud of!  The Imagination Playground has finally materialized.  Seemingly fashioned after Europe's Adventure Playgrounds, but these seem meant for larger age ranges.  Adventure Playgrounds are typically made for school age children.  The NYC's playground is open for all ages- even toddlers.  With "play associates" on hand to help facilitate a safe environment, parents can sit back and drink in the wonder of their child's unstructured free play.

 More and more research supports what amazing teachers have been saying for years, children need ample time each day in unstructured play.  Time where they can play freely.  As adults, we often devalue play in children's lives as wasted time.  A privilege of spending time at some of the amazing schools we've toured is the stunning examples of the richness, depth, and learning that occurs during free play.  We love the idea of city parks affording everyone the opportunity to marvel in the ingenuity, resourcefulness, and competence of children of all ages.

 Besides it just looks fun!

Personalized Wooden Dolls

Etsy's Urastarhouse will custom make wooden dolls for your family!  Send her a few pics of your desired characters(pets are welcome) and she'll magically recreate your posse!  You'll have a blast watching your tots use their dolls to process their days!

Have school all summer long with The Enchanted Cupboard's portable schoolhouse.   Made to order sets are available, too.  

Playshapes

Miller Goodman, oh how we love thee!  Their playshapes come in a set of 74 blocks and the possibilities really are endless.  Children from 2 to 100 will be entertaining themselves for hours!  Happy Playing!

Feather Down Farm Days

Growing up, we were never too far away from the farm. The grandchildren of farmers and residents of a town built on agriculture, you could say that farming is in our DNA or at least in our collective subconscious. Maybe that's why Feather Down Farm is so terribly exciting to us!  Here you can
  the tour of the farm, see the behind-the-scenes workings and the daily chores necessary to care for animals and grow good food, collect eggs from roaming carefree chickens, talk to some cows, climb a tree, go for a bike ride, and thoroughly enjoy yourself!

Visitors stay in beautiful tents with all one needs. We want to sleep in the canopy bed (really a sleeping cupboard!- see the girl peeking out at you?) There are both cold and hot shower facilities, so no real roughing it required!

Seems like a wonderful way to spend a week in the summer and get away from it all!

Where do the Children Play?

(Via Richter Spielgerate)

We feel this article is a perfect companion piece to all these lovely pics from Richter Spielgerate and Play Advocate Tim Gill. Found on the Michigan Public Television website as supplement writing for their documentary "Where Do The Children Play?" We will post about that film later in the month!
We couldn't have said it better ourselves:

"There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in."
--Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (1940)

(via Tim Gill)

Free play is slipping away from children’s lives. Yet time spent building forts or exploring outdoors, caring for animals, pretending or problem-solving with peers are now being shown by a wide body of research to be essential to healthy development, spiritual attunement, and emotional survival. Open-ended play in places that offer access to woods, gullies and gardens, ditches, boulders, and bike paths enhances curiosity and confidence throughout life.

Play takes many forms. It may be best defined from within as a spontaneous human expression that relies on imagination and a sense of freedom. Players invent alternative contexts for conversation, visualization, movement, and interactions with real objects. They find release and involvement, stimulation and peace. Although play may arise anywhere, even in a cement cell, children are beckoned by the natural world to enjoy sensations of being alive.

(Via Tim Gill)

While some benefits of play are obvious—fitness, fun, negotiating skills—the subtle, even sacred, ways play sustains spirit resist easy articulation. Excitement builds when children of all abilities are included in a playful and rich engagement with each other and the living world. Although societies tend to identify children and nature as property rather than as process, we are interconnected and patterned early on in ways that define us as adults. The observation and antics we bring to our first environments are transferred to every landscape of endeavor that follows whether in business, science or the arts.

Creativity develops through risk-taking, storytelling and secret world building. Engaging the local is a child’s work and play, the only way personal domains are enlarged. Certainly this process of self-discovery deserves to be treated with as much care by educators and families as the cultivation of literacy and the mastery of mathematical skills in schools. Yet we know little, it seems, about the intersection between play and the inspiration recreation draws from its physical context. What makes children gravitate to certain locales in search of comfort, security, community, self-awareness or beauty and avoid others?

(via Richter Spielgerate)

A new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics says what children really need for healthy development is time for more old-fashioned play. This deprivation affects mental and physical health as well as cognitive and social capacities. How can our communities offer this life-enhancing experience that prevents the decline of mental health and offers happiness and healing memories?

Seattle Children's Playgarden

This makes us want to go to Seattle very badly! Seattle's Children's PlayGarden  is the dream child of Liz Bullard.  Ms. Bullard, who is a Speech/ Language Pathologist noted that there were few options which were safe and accessible for children with developmental delays and physical limitations. Working with the Seattle's Director of Parks and Recreation, she was able to plan, fund, and build her dream.  The PlayGarden has a five stages of development and they are in their fourth. The park will be open to the public and will also offer other programs. 

They have already offered summer gardening programs and are going to have space for rabbits on the site.

Look forward to seeing the finished amphitheater and water feature!

Richter Spielgerate

German Company Richter Spielgerate or United Play has been making play spaces where children's dreams can take flight for over 37 years. Featuring natural materials with occasional infusions of metalwork,  this company located near the Bavaria continues to lead the market in truly inspirational design for children. If you were wondering if natural playgrounds were nothing more than a landscaped plot of land, think again. United Play  has redefined the idea of playgrounds. Part art installation, part working set design, part physical challenge, all fun! This company's love and understanding of children's deep need to play is remarkable! Want to set sail!

This last ship is Captain Hook's ship which is part of a Peter Pan themed park in Kingston Gardens in London.
Or play in with water or sand.... We love that their playgrounds are used by a much wider age range than we generally see at playgrounds.

The picture below is a stone xylophone!

We want to go to there!

This one tickles our fancy due to our roots! Wanna be a Viking?

Trash or Treasure.

As the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure. An Israeli artist is living this saying. Working with school age children, Haggit Rich of SafsaPesel creates sculptures for schools in her area of the world.  She collaborates with the children on the design and then she and the children scour the area for materials.  LOVE IT! Via Green Prophet.

This project reminds me of the  Museum of Tolerance's Exhibit "Power of Play". 

Did anyone see it? I wanted to but just didn't get there... I hope they bring it back sometime.

Kids On Roof- Uncensored Toys

While falling in love all over again with the Dutch toy maker Kids on Roof I was searching through their website. I have always loved their toys and really what's not to love. Great aesthetics, fabulous concept, and responsible production.  So I was surprised when I saw (I think) a new collection- the Uncensored Toys. And I'm not sure what I think about it. Here they are:

 

"Not meant to shock.......Let kids play war peacefully -as they have been doing for centuries and will do coming centuries..."  I am shocked. And also a little shocked by my shock.  I am so conflicted by these. While on one hand I completely understand the need to allow children to play without limits on that play.  I feel really awkward about providing children with the actual tools for violent play. I mean these are pretty directive. It's not like they are going to be mistaken for a kitchen utensil. I suppose a child who has no concept of war would see these are simply trucks. If we provide these to children aren't we subtly condoning violence or at least glorifying it a bit.
Can children play war peacefully? Is that an oxymoron?

I remember reading once about a group of preschool children who had lived through a violent attack on their school. It was a horrifying day. People were injured, some died. Teachers reported that for months after the attack the children would play, aggressively, the scenario over and over again. But in each go round children would take turns being the victims and the gunman. The outcome changed as well. Sometimes, police would rescue everyone at the school. Other times there were no survivors.  This play most often made the teachers very uncomfortable and they often wanted to stop it. But they as a group realized the importance that the play had on the children's healing. Eventually the children play through this scenario less and less until finally they were done.
Being mindful of the fact that children do need to engage in acting out the scenes that they see, are we helping or hurting when we give them the tools to play aggressively? Is this an American perspective? From the best of my understanding the Netherlands isn't really a war hunger crowd. Are we more touchy in the US about it due to our violent culture? What do you all think?

Kids on Roof - Totem Collection

I apparently have Dutch Designers on the mind this week! Because I can't stop thinking about the gorgeous Kids On Roof Totem Collection. I was a fan of the Totem Tree and now their new Butterfly and Dragonfly have me smiling again!

What a great way to usher spring in than with these fantastic interactive and beautiful pieces!