With all of this talk about kids and play, it’s about time we hear from an educator here on the PlayGrounding Podcast. Doug Smith has been a physical education teacher for nineteen years. In this episode, we discuss the state of physical education in schools...
Free play, also known as child-directed play, is becoming more and more restricted for American kids. We’ve talked on PlayGrounding many times about the importance of free play, how it’s where many children first encounter risk and freedom. It’s where they first begin...
Do you remember what it was like to be a child at the playground? When you first arrive and see the equipment, the sand, the grass? I remember that feeling well – the desire to jump, crawl, run, do summer saults and cartwheels. But somewhere along the line, that...
Rethinking Playground Play for Grownups Fitness fun? For most of my life, I would have answered NO WAY to that question. It’s the one challenge I’ve had to my belief that whatever is true about play for children is also true for adults. Children play very differently...
For some of us adults, the kind of play we remember as kids doesn’t exist anymore in many communities across America. It’s a specific kind of play called “free play.” When I was a kid, I remember running out into the neighborhood after school. I organically discovered...
