ALTERNATIVE PLAY

An article by Matt Davies based on the transcript of a lecture given at the Groundwork Federation
National Conference October 2004

What is Play?

Play is an essential part of every childs life and vital to processes of human development. It provides the
mechanism for children to explore the world around them and the medium through which skills are
developed and practised. It is essential for physical, emotional and spiritual growth, intellectual and
educational development, and acquiring social and behavioural skills.
Charter for Childrens Play, (1998) The Childrens Play Council and Childrens Society

Play is freely chosen, personally directed, intrinsically motivated behaviour that actively engages the
child
Definition of play..from the National Occupational Standards of the playwork, childcare and early years
professions

Play is childrens way of perceiving the world they have been called upon to change
Maxim Gorki

Play is an activity characterised by freedom from all but personally imposed rules (which are changed at
will), by free-wheeling fantasy, involvement and by the absence of any goals outside of the activity itself.
Bruno Bettleheim The Importance of Play Atlantic Monthly, 1987

Play is what children and young people od when they follow their own ideas and interests, in their own
way and for their own reasons
HM Treasury Play Review

What Does Play Do for Us?

Childhood far longer for our species than any other animal, even primates. Nature is in no hurry. Allows
us unparalleled capacities in lifelong intellectual, social, emotional and moral growth.

Childhood is our species evolutionary edge.

Play is the source of our extraordinary capacity to learn, our imaginative social interactions, and our facility
unique among all life forms to use and produce symbols, language and culture. Raymond Scupin and
Christopher Decorse. Anthropology, a Global Perspective 1988

Play is the work of the child. Nothing else should be expected from it. No hidden agendas about
increasing intellectual ability or performance in sport or athletics should be allowed to interfere with the
freedom and the right of the child to play in the way that it wants to. (Raina DArcy Baldwin, You Are Your
Childs First Teacher, 2003).
Play and Education

Despite the hard evidence in favour of play, many people are becoming increasingly concerned at the
erosion of play-time in schools for younger children because of the undermining influence of the National
Curriculum. (Wood 1999, Keating and others, 2000; Wood and Bennett, 1997; Bennett and others,
1997; quoted in Making the Case for Play, Childrens Play Council 2002). In some quarters, the value of
play in education is in question because of differing views as to what education in school is for to pass
exams (which suggests the need for direct instruction) or a more enabling, exploratory form of learning
(where play may have greater role in helping children to explore and learn from their activities). In the
normal formal target-oriented school agenda, children must conform to an outside notion of what
education in school is for, and to someone elses idea of what they should learn. They must, in following
that agenda confront someone elses problems rather than setting and solving their own. (Macintyre,
Enhancing Learning through Play 2001, quoted in Making the Case for Play, Childrens Play Council
2002).

Play allows children to develop and test emotional and social relationships. They can also experiment with
behaviour and physical games. When children have enough time to play freely outdoors there is a
positive effect on intellectual development later on in life. Research has been carried out on break-times
in schools as a time for learning social behaviours and forming social networks. For example, an analysis
of playtime (Blatchford and Sharp,1994) suggests that it is during these periods that children practise and
develop important cognitive skills, including practising language, role-taking activities and problem
solving. Of key importance is social learning and peer interactions. (Making the Case for Play, Childrens
Play Council 2002).

Social Benefits of Play

The opportunity to be involved in outdoor, active, games reduces the incidences of bullying and
aggressive behaviour (Kim Brooking-Payne, Games Children Play 1996 and Katz and others 2001).
Learning through Landscapes are proponents of an environmentally-based inclusive approach to play
space, especially in school grounds where they have recorded remarkable results in the level of social
interaction and the reduction in bullying (Special People, Special Places LtL 1995)

Kinesthetic Learning
The Importance of Play and Movement

Old fashioned circle games usually played by children on every street corner in the 50s and 60s link the
child back to archetypal patterns and movements as found in the planetary orbits of our solar system.
These rhythms and patterns make significant influences on childrens developing neural pathways in the
brain (Wil van Haren and Rudolf Kischnick, Childs Play 1996). Allowing a child freedom of movement,
particularly of limbs, is indicated in being a prime factor in general play and health for children. Piaget saw
movement and physical development as the prerequisite for higher levels of thinking. Other research
stresses the importance of movement and gross motor play for intellectual development. (Sutcliffe et al
1987 British Journal of Physical Education vol.18, no.4, quoted in Exercising Muscles and Mind, Marjorie
Ouvry 2003). A study by the National Playing Fields Association (NPFA) found that play supports learning
and cognitive development. (Making the Case for Play, Childrens Play Council 2002).

Brain Development
The child grows as an organic whole. Brain Imaging studies show that experiences of every kind,
emotional, social, sensory, physical, and cognitive all shape the brain and are shaped by the brain and by
each other. Further studies show the significance of current anthropological theory showing that early
tool use and hemispheric specialisation associated with hand use provide the behavioural and
neurological context for to account for the evolution of human language.
Neurologist, Frank R Wilson, The Hand: How its Use Shapes the Brain. 1998.

Thinking, Feeling and Acting

He also shows that the development of physical skills can help foster an intense emotional commitment
to learning, in the overall context of the dynamic synergy released by the fusion of movement, thought
and feeling. Neurologist, Frank R Wilson, The Hand: How its Use Shapes the Brain. 1998.

Alternative to What?

Play and Electronic Media

An Opinion Poll by NOP for Childrens Play Council in 1999 showed that 80% of parents believed their
children had fewer opportunities for outdoor play than they had as children and that the childrens
development was suffering as a result. 68% thought their children were playing less because of poor
outdoor play opportunities. 75% felt their children watched too much television and spent too much time
on computers. (Making the Case for Play, Childrens Play Council 2002). Fools Gold, a report by the
Alliance for Childhood outlines the harmful effects of computer and electronic media use for young
children, highlighting behavioural and social problems. According to the study, 80% of children under 4
years of age have a television in their bedroom. (Alliance for Childhood, Fools Gold Report on Children
and the use of Computers and Television 2002).

Fools Gold Report

By 1997, parents were already spending 40% less time with their children than they had 30 years before.
M Benoit, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry News 1997

Preschool children in US watch 21 hours of TV per week. Families watch 28 hours. Mary Winn, The Plug
in Drugsome preschoolers are watching a staggering 54 hours per week.

US, 1994, 14 % 6-11 yr olds are obese compared to 5% in 1965. Type 2 diabetes rapidly increasing.

Lack of exercise is bad for learning. Moving in 3d space stimulates sensory and intellectual development.
Educational psychologist Jane Healyrestriction in freely moving around and employing all of their
senses are at higher risk of developmental delays in menatal abilities such as comprehending abstract
verbal concepts. Failure to Connect 1998

Children today between the age of 10 and 17 will have 1/3 less face to face encounters during their
lifetimes as a result of increased use of electronic media.

Eduactors find that children cant generate their own imagery. Need to be taught how to play
symbolically, previously a symptom of mentally or emotionally disordered youngsters.

Software designers exposing children to too many contrived, controlled versions of reality rather than
nature as its raw untidy self.
Loss of wonder and reverence for natural world, which can be a powerful motivator.
CA Bowers Educating for an Ecologically Sustaniable Culture 1995. Wonder and Reverence leads to
sense of responsibility for community and larger ecosystems that sustain human life itself.

The Big Picture, Mental Health Foundation 1999

Children are failing to thrive emothionally, are becoming less resilient and less able to cope with the ups
and downs of life. 1 in 5 children and young people aged 4 to 20 is estimated to suffer from mental
stress with problems ranging from bedwetting to anorexia, significantly disrupting their lives. Pressures
on children to succeed and over-protection by parents who prevent healthy risk-taking, are factors in
proooducing emotionally illiterate children who are at risk of breakdowns. The curtailment of childrens
playtime and the strong emphasis on early learning leave children with very little time to develop emotional
wellbeing.

Intelligence

Howard Gardner cited in Eugene Schwartz, ADHD a challenge of our times Waldorf Education Research
Bulletin, Vol. IV, N 1 1999. Studies on child cognitive development, Gardner redefines intelligence into
core components of multiple intelligences which are: linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic,
naturalist, musical, spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences. He might also add imaginative
intelligence. Situational Intelligence Freya Jaffke, Work and Play in Early Childhood, 2000

Emotional Intelligence

The most critical role for the emotions is to create, organise and orchestrate many of the minds most
important functions. In fact, intellect, academic abilities, sense of self, consciousness and morality have
common origins in our earliest and ongoing emotional experiences. The emotions are in fact the
architects of a vast array of cognitive operations throughout life. Indeed, they make possible all creative
thought. Stanley Greenspan,The Growth of the Mind and the Endangered Origins of Intelligence

Imaginative play

Imagination means creating images that are not present to the senses. All of us exercise this faculty
virtually every day and every night..the whole crux of human intelligence hinges on this ability of
mind..nature has not programmes error into the genetic system andthe childs preoccupation with
fantasy and imagination is vital to development. Joseph Chilton Pearce. The Magical Child 1997

Generating images and transforming them leads to ability to deal with challenging mathematical, scientific
and cultural concepts.

Language, Orality and Literacy

Play goes underground..verbal becomes inward, silent self-talk. This interior monologue reappears later
in art, poetry and theatre

Orality preceeds Literacy self-talk. talking through problems, experimentation, comes from talking
to adult care-givers. Inner speech important for academic as well as personal development. Ages 6-9
gains in mathematical achievement as well as in other subjects are related to the use of self-talk.
Orality blocked by electronic media, TV, Films, CDs, PCs, etc..
J Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A study of the Play Element in Culture 1955

Ritual

Henry Bett the Games of Children 1929

Childens street games imitation. American Indians..games of the adults ceremonial to Godsfertility,
rain, expelling demons etc..Children of prehistoric times imitated all the other doings of their elders so that
it is possible that some chldrens games are the ghosts of these ancient mysteries.

Ref: Stonehenge and Ring games cosmic significance..Sally go Round the Sun

Children have an instinct for the theatre of ritual, the magic of mystery and the sense of the moment.

Mythopoeic

Children play with language, reversal, alliteration, onomatopoeic, rhyme. Imagemaking and
personification are mythopoeic mindnon-literal as in ancient myths. Old Norse speech thorn for
tongue, floor of the hall of winds for earth, tree-wolf for wind. Or boat bearer for the sea, journey
carriers for shoes. Childrens contributions includecar-wheelie-housie for caravan, puff-puff in the
sky for aeroplane, angel uniform for wedding dress.

Old poetic way of seeing a salve to the rational mind. Appeals to the feelings rather than the intellectual.
Starts to build a different way of looking at the world.

Symbolic play

enhances language development. Language a complex symbol system.. In symbolic play the object is
used in other ways and imagined powers and properties are attributed.

Functional Play

In functional play, it is used as they have seen it used in real life.

Sociodramatic Play

Sara Smilansky, Childrens Play and Learning 1990 play research. Good sociodramatic players are
more successful in all fileds and are better at school integration. Also helps young children learn to
classify objects and group concepts in hierarchies, skills that have proven resistant to formal instruction,
quoted from James E Johnson.

Role Play

Social skills, adjustment to situation and others. Opening line for playPretend Im an egg and you laid
me. Often considerable negotiation precedes a game. Negotiation is at the heart of social
competence and contract. Sally Jenkinson, The Genius of Play 2001.

Fantasy Play
The amount and complexity of childrens fantasy play were significantly correlated with four measures of
social competence: teacher rating of social skill, peer popularity, affective role-taking ability, and the
amount of positive social activity (eg expressions of friendship, invitations to play and amount of
conversation. Connolly and Doyle 1984 cited in Dorothy Faulkners Pamphlet Play, Self and the Social
World. Michael INstitue for Spatial Dynamics.

Paracosms Other worlds. Psyche and fantasy.

Children create coherent other worlds in their play. Can compensate for emotional absence and trauma.
Chidren re-enacting an attack in a playground, helped them to come to terms with the tragedy.

Fantasy Einstein said toward the end of his life that he values his gift of fantasy above all his abilities in
abstract intellectual reasoning.

The Problem with DesignersBE Hendricks

Designers tend to design for designers. Design professionals, even more so than most other persons of
all ages, would like to be respected and held in high regard by their colleagues. Need to feel what they
deign is good taste, or avant garde of forming a new style. This may be built into trhe character of a
designer, but it can get in the way of being a good designer for childrens play.

For a designer, design is usually about forms for a child, design is about activity.

Another tendency is for designers to create stage settings for programmable activity for which they write
the script. Treat city as a work of art rather than a setting for the everyday. Childrens play is un-
scriptable.

But the designers explorative approach to materials, forms and ideas is a form of play. Like children, the
designer says, what can I do with this?

Can Alternative Play areas be designed?

Designing play areas requires a playful approach to design, to taking risks to testing the boundaries of
trends in design, it means to risk being seen as not serious.

Designing for play is about expressing ideas and feelings, about communicating playfulness and joy of
living.

Physical play facilities and structures, including safety surfaces should not take up more than 25% of the
total space available for children.

Environmental Personality a different place, a different personality

For older children..more wilderness appropriate.

Children like messy undersigned environments. Need expertise on how children play. Takes years of
experience. Must consult with care providers, play facilitators etc.
Play Gardens. Lots of Nature. Need to be delightful. Signal for children and welcoming to adults too.
Celebrate the joy of living in this time and place. Uplift the soul and make one smile and feel happy,
feeling of spring flowers.

Role play diminished in public parks, maybe through wish not to reveal personal life, to find out norms
first. But very important form of play so need to encourage. Themes from daily public life, not home life.
Eg fire station, castles, cars. Focus on ideas not representation.

Spaces for children of different ages to play together..sand and water, socialising, games etc.. Physical
equipment should be separate for different groups due to different physucal demands on strength and
ability.

Very young children need small spaces to feel comfortable. Emotional Comfort.

View of the world from 90 cm. Scale

Subspaces of 200-300cm in diameter for secret play

of two or three children.

Must design outside, at least 2 hours every day.

Designing for play is about designing for living. No recipe books. Not about one design, but about
setting into growth a whole series of play areas that come about things grow, move and change with the
seasons and weather.

Evolutionary Approach

Particpatory

Sameness

of swings, seesaws and springy animals. Dont throw out things that children like. They need to be
placed in a better landscape.
Eliminating possibilities for swinging and sliding from new forms of playground because they appear in
traditional playgrounds is akin to eliminaiting sleeoing and eating possibilities from experimental domestic
architecture.

Pumping Swings excillerating and empowering. Sharon Stein, Landscapes for Learning.

Low Structure Materials

True creativity comes with low structure materials. When one thing can become something else.

Pre-industrial society..children involved in their parents workopportunities to play outdoors without

adults. Today we think it is our duty to play with our children. But children play best when left to their
own devices, in or just out of the shadow of the working adult.

Opie and Opie Childrens Games 1984

unlike the obstrusive sports of adults, for which ground has to be permanently set aside and perpetually
tended, childrens games are ones which the players adapt to their surroundings in the time avialble. In
fact most street ganes are as hapopily played in the dark as in the light. To achild sport iss sweetest
when there are no spectators. The places they like best are the secret places where no one else goes
To a child there is more joy in a rubbish tip than in a flowering rockery, in a fallen tree than in a piece of
statuary, in a muddy track than in a gravel pathYet the cult amongst her elders is to trim, to pave, to
smooth out, to clean up, to prettify, to convert to economic advantage

Opie and Opie claim that the happiest people are those that can rely on their own resources. When
children begin to feel they can only enjoy themselves by playing on proper equipment, and if childrens
games are tamed and made part of the school curricula then children will be dissatisfied and descend
into vandalism.

Examples of Play from the Past

FromWinifred Foley, Child in the Forest BBC London undated

The ashmix consisted mainly of buckets of ashes, with empty tins, broken china and bottomless pails
Older girls pillaged the ashmix for tins, bottles, and bits of china to play houses or shops. Nearby
stood a great chestnust tree, one lone among a forest of oak; each triangle among its roots was a girls
territory. A bit of rusty iron bed lath, balanced on a stone with a cocoa lid on each end made scales. We
sold brown sugar (sandy earth), boiled sweets (little stones) and currants (sheep droppings)

Toys and saturation entertainment.

David Cohen, The Development of Play, 1993 quotes the French semiologist, Roland Barthes toys are
the stunted hallmarks of a materialistic culture. The child becomes a passive consumer rather than a
creator.

Affordances

The play potential in an object or place as seen from the childs viewpoint. JJ Gibson 1999.

Movement

Seek opportunities to design for maximum movement and inclusion for all abilities within the playground.

Designers are form givers, concerned with form and language, whereas children are activators,
concerned with body language and action.

Magic

From within as well as from without. True magic is not technological tricks. Stories and myths can be
bound into a mystical landscape that the child can imbue with her own images and characters.
Allegory and Metaphor

Human Beings carry the heritage of the garden of paradise.

Paths and circuits that lead interesting journeys are allegories of other personal journeys that all children
experience.

Multi-Modal Play

Mufti-modal play is needed in playgrounds today. Opportunities for wheeled forms of mobility are
essential, be it a wheel chair, push chair or buggy, skateboards or roller skates. Balls of all shapes and
sizes are perennially popular for all children including those with impairments. As we showed earlier,
movement is the key to play. A wall or surface for bouncing balls against will help provide for interactive
ball games for several children or the solo player. These forms of play survive the ever-changing fashions
in standard playground equipment. Plants can provide sensual stimulation engaging the smell, sound,
sight and touch. Plants that smell good, have interesting and pleasant textures and forms, are colourful
and rustle pleasantly in the wind can provide something for everybody including those with a sensory
impairment. Horticultural therapy is now becoming a recognised way of connecting children back to
nature and the earth. (Horticultural Therapy Centre, Battersea Park, London).

The Psychogenetic law

Heidi Britz-Crecelius explains that all over the world children experience the same biological needs for
play in very similar circumstances. She quotes from Indian Boyhood, Dr Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) a
Sioux Indian about their play adventures and activities where the boys would roam, lighting fires, camping
out for days, firing arrows through the air, swimming and catching fish, making spinning tops, whistles
and spears, riding ponies and tobogganing in winter. Britz-Crecelius suggests that just as there is a
biogenetic law of embryonic development whereby the embryo briefly recapitulates the development of its
species, there is also the psychogenetic law that spiritually every child in the course of its development
repeats ancestral stages of civilisation, or at least indications of them. (Heidi Britz-Crecelius, Children at
Play 1979).

Accessible Playgrounds The Disability Discrimination Act

The environment should fit the child, not the child made to fit the environment. (ODPM, Developing
Accessible Playspace 2003).

Play for special needs. Higher sand tables, raised tables, wheel chair platforms etc do help but need to
be able to play like everyone else. Do not provide play challenges for the least physically able. Provide a
landscape with a range of possibilities. . (Hendricks 2001 and ODPM, Developing Accessible Playspace
2003).

Playgrounds with vegetation and accessible elements are more inclusive and less discriminatory against
those with impairments. It is important to remember and be clear that it is not the child with an
impairment that is disabled but it is society and the way many environments are designed that disables
the child. (ODPM, Developing Accessible Playspace 2003).
The Adventure Playground Movement

In the adventure Playground Movement of the 60s and 70s pioneered by Lady Allen of Hurtwood the aim
is to give children the opportunity to co-create their own playground with raw materials, usually of wood.
(Lady Allen of Hurtwood, Planning for Play 1968 quoted in Christopher Alexanders classic work, Pattern
Language 1972). He proposes the collection of waste material to be left for children to make of it what
they will. Today, such opportunities are seldom available or desirable. However, what is achievable is the
co-creation of the playground in design terms and in artistic activities such as mosaic laying, willow
weaving or painting. B.E Hendricks says that the way children play is through process and activity. For
the child, the finished product is not important. A good-looking playground is not appealing if it does not
give them activity and involvement.

Safety Standards EN 1177 and 1176

EN 1177 and 1176. These standards lay down minimum distances between objects, surfacing and fall
heights, reducing entrapment risks, maintenance checks and procedures.

Safety and Risk

Safety versus Risks in Playgrounds have to be weighed against developmental opportunities for children.
Research by the Mental Health Foundation found that it was important for children to be afforded the
opportunity to play and take risks and to use their initiative. Also, consolidating friendships and dealing
with conflict, the basic skills needed in order to become emotionally literate, increases resilience to
mental health problems in later life. (Making the Case for Play, Childrens Play Council 2002). A report by
the NPFA also stresses the importance of allowing children to test boundaries and explore risk. (Best Play,
NPFA 2000 quoted in Making the Case for Play, Childrens Play Council 2002). In the case of parents
with a child with impairment, the majority of these parents would prefer some degree of acceptable risk
for their children in preference to total exclusion from being able to play with their siblings and other
children. Too many playgrounds are sterile and boring because all risk has been completely designed out
of them. This is leading to children being denied a healthy range of play experiences, limiting their
enjoyment and causing potentially damaging consequences for their development. In a position
statement, the Play Safety Forum says: Children need and want to take risks when they play. Play
provision aims to respond to these needs and wishes by offering children stimulating, challenging
environments for exploring and developing their abilities. In doing this, play provision aims to manage the
level of risk so that children are not exposed to unacceptable risks of death or serious injury. The
position statement goes on to say that of the 2 million or so childhood accident cases treated by
hospitals each year, less than 2% involve playground equipment. Soccer is far more dangerous.
Fatalities on playgrounds are very rare about one per three or four years on average. This compares
with, for instance, over 100 child pedestrian fatalities a year and over 500 child fatalities from accidents
overall. (Play Safety Forum August 2002)

Ecology and Biophyllia

Fools Gold Biophilia deep need to connect with the living diversity of nature.

The emphasis on mediated experiences.TV, video, computer games and electronic mediadeprive
children of immediate sensory encounters with the real world. Play provides the opportunity for a
smorgasbord of wonderful first hand experiences. In nature play all the sense are active and
correspondence of feeling within the child, a symphony of responses to the world is aroused.
Play and the senses encouraging nature exploration, appreciation of and emotional uinderstanding of
natural world.

The playground can also be an educational resource, offering environmental education opportunities for
schools, or just a chance to encounter plants, ecology and biodiversity within a safe and tempered
environment.

Nature Gardens, Ecological Play must never forget the element of playfulness and not impose our own
values on what children should derive from play. Should not forget to communicate playfulness and
fantasy. Hendricks 2001

We cannot win the battle to save species and environments unless we forge an emotional bond between
ourselves and nature..we cannot fight to save what we do not loveStephen Jay Gould Enchanted
Evening 1991

Nature trains all of a childs senses and encourages reflection and acute observation which later supports
scientific insight. Subtle beauties of the natural world encourage children to focus their attention for
themselves. Today scientists consider childhood the most critical period for cultivating an affinity,
appreciation, awareness, knowledge and concern for the natural world. Stephen R Kellert, Kinship to
Mastery: Biophilia in Human Evolution and Development.

Weeds and overgrown ground a good resource for children..as is developing a garden.

A playground can be an environment affording contact with nature, the elements, and ecology. Steve van
Maitres Earth Education has been exploring this area since the 1980s.

Conclusion

The Case for better Playgrounds

There is, then, enough evidence to suggest that better outdoor playground provision is desperately
required for children to play without restrictions from target-oriented educational programmes in schools.
It is also evident that playgrounds need to be able to better compete with the insidious attraction of the
computer, electronic media such as DVD and television. Playgrounds need to offer children fuller, richer
experiences, more challenging on physical, emotional and mental capacities if they are to win children
from the audio-visual world of electronic media and gaming. It can be done and indeed must be done if
we are to reverse the increasing behavioural and social problems, mental health issues and, more
recently, obesity in childhood.

The path to tomorrow leads through the playground.

Playgrounds should be renamed research laboratories. Buckminster Fuller

Our childhood stays with us for a lifetime.

Play is sacred and ritualistic. It embodies all the faculties of what it means to be human beings. Art,
Literature, Culture, Humour, Ritual, Sympathy and Self-Awareness

Michael Mendizza has re-defined play as a state of consciousness, not an activity. Athletes call this state
the zone, children call it play.

4 Elements / My Theory 4 Kingdoms of Nature, States of Being etc..

4 Elements Play Theory

A play theory to ensure that a playground becomes fully inclusive and responsive to the whole human
being. Our starting point is the essential 4 Kingdoms of Nature; the Mineral, Plant, Animal and Human.
We attach importance to a holistic view of the natural world and therefore concern ourselves with
ensuring that each Kingdom of Nature is reflected within the microcosmic world of the playground.

Kingdom: The Mineral

Element: Earth
Type of Play: Object Play, Mastery Play, Exploratory Play
State of Being: Interest, Wonder
Quality: Form, Structure, Enclosure

We define the Mineral element in the play environment as all that is formed; the fixed, physical and
skeletal structures of the equipment, apparatus, and boundaries. This needs to be maintained and cared
for, as it degenerates, just like the human mineral physical body. If cared for well, built well and planned
well, this provides the essential vessel for all the other activities and elements. This sets the scale, gives
security and emphasis.

Kingdom: The Plant

Element: Water
Type of Play: Communication Play, Creative Play, Social Play (team play and games)
State of Being: Participatory, Connected, Peripheral, Flowing
Quality: Pattern, Proportion, Rhythm, Geometry

This is the vegetative layer that also relates to the child through the energetic forces of life and activity,
development and continual change. Interestingly, this level relates directly to breathing in the human
being. The chemical formula for the process of photosynthesis in plants is reversed in the human activity
of breathing. Every school child knows that plants breath carbon dioxide which we emit as waste and we
breathe the oxygen that plants emit as waste. Vegetation also proliferates and grows spontaneously,
reproducing easily. It grows to mathematical and geometric laws to be found in pattern, proportion and
rhythm. This has been explored in mathematics as the golden mean, and the Fibonacci series. In
ancient traditions, the art of Sacred Geometry developed to express the secret laws of growth and life
found in the living world. Thus we advocate the use of patterns, geometry, rhythm and sequence. So
much can be achieved in this way to bring a sense of wonder to children a sense of wonder and
amazement through patterns found in the natural world.

Kingdom: Animal
Element: Air
Type of Play: Locomotor Play, Rough and Tumble Play, Imaginative Play, Role Play
State of Being: Impulsive, Emotional, Feeling, Pictorial
Quality: Instinct, Comfort, Sensual
The Animal level is expressed in instincts, the senses and the emotions. Here we find the biological and
organisational level in the play environment; the need of elements to smell, touch, taste, feel and explore,
relax on, sit on, hide behind. For example a bench to sit in the warmth of the sun, even to dose, provides
the deep satisfaction akin to that of a cat curled up and content with the world with nothing else to do or
worry about. The emotional level of fear, anger and joy are basic instinctual attributes that signify the
deep relationship of our inner natures to the animal kingdom. The need to meet and observe others, to
be seen and acknowledged, interacting with playfulness, or quietly observing from a safe vantage point,
assessing the size and mood of the others nature. Childrens animal natures need to run, to play, to size-
up the other. Thus, the playground must offer the satisfaction of desires, the bench in the sun, the
vantage point, the path to run and move about on and the hiding place.

Kingdom: Human
Element: Fire
Type of Play: Symbolic Play, Sociodramatic Play, Fantasy Play, Deep Play (orality and literality)
State of Being: Constructional, Visionary, Sacrificial
Quality: Art, Ritual, Magic, Mystery

The Human Element. This is represented in the visual and performing arts, organised games, the quality
of thought and self-reflection and awareness, the ability to love others and the world unconditionally and
above all the activity of ritual. These activities are not found in any of the other Kingdoms of Nature, yet
the Human Kingdom includes all others. Games were often the reflection of deeply sacred ideas. The
Greek Olympics embodied the principles of Beauty, Truth and Strength. The athletes were originally
symbolic of celestial movements and patterns in the universe. (Kim Brooking-Payne, Games Children Play
1996). Thus we seek to include the arts, creating space as artform, employing traditional crafts and
methods of decoration. (See Sherington School, Argyle School and Kaizen School.) Above all, we believe
that ritual needs to be re-instated in the lives of children. Many of our traditional fairs and festivals are
related to very ancient pre-Christian solar festivals and initiation rites, honouring the deities that bring us
life and existence. In Secret Games of the Gods, Nigel Pennick 1995, explains the ritualistic and universal
role of the shaman in forming ancient society that lies at the root of all cultures today. Thus, ritual can be
the element to unite our human kind and endeavour restoring a lacking sense of the universal human
qualities of beauty, truth and goodness.

Matt Davies, Chief Executive Planet Earth Ltd, London and Sussex

This is the transcript of a lecture given at the Groundwork Federation National Conference October 2004