Tessa Rose Natural Playspaces

Recycled hardwood table, chair and stool set

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Fri, 10 May 2013 03:43:00 +0000

My husband has just completed a table, chair and stool set, made from recycled timber (Melaleuca leucadendra) that we managed to "liberate" from the local council arborists who were going to chip it.

The pieces are going to a current project that J M Landscapes have nearly completed. I'm impressed with the pieces and so were the children.

Newest completed project: Bronte Public School, Bronte Sydney

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 04:07:00 +0000

Bronte Public School, Bronte, Sydney, New South Wales
Construction: J M Landscapes

Main Playspace, After, 2013

Main Playspace, Before, 2012

Main Playspace, After, 2013

Main Playspace, Before, 2012

Main Playspace, After, 2013

Chicken/Rabbit area, Before, 2012

Playspace, After, 2013

Another completed 2012 project, Style Street C.C. LDC. Leichhardt, Sydney

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 04:27:00 +0000

Style Street Childrens Community LDC, Sydney, New South Wales

Construction: Exterior Landscapes

Main Playspace, Before, 2011

Main Playspace, After, 2012

Main Playspace, Before, 2011

Main Playspace, After, 2012

Main Playspace, Before, 2011

Main Playspace, After, 2012

Main Playspace, Before, 2011

Main Playspace, After, 2012

Main Playspace, Before, 2011

Main Playspace, After, 2012

Photos of one of the more recently constructed centres

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 03:54:00 +0000

Kids Cottage, Hunters Hill, Sydney, New South Wales

Construction: Asset Landscapes

Kids Cottage, Hunters Hills (KCHH) is the second long daycare centre for Con and Mary Kakakios, following on to the hugely successful Kids Cottage, Gladesville. KCHH is a two level, purpose built LDC positioned in a residential area of Hunters Hill. Because of its location a successful Appeal to the Land and Environment court provided an approval for the centre to be built, with conditions on the construction of the playspaces.

The Infants area is on the upper level, easily accessible from the front entry level and carpark. The playspace contains a sand-play area built within a raised deck and a stepping-stone walk way leading to infants sized seating. The playspace is constructed to provide shelter from the wind and heat whilst allowing the children to observe and experience their environment. The different levels and structures provide both a challenge and assistance to children learning to walk. Because of the conditions of the L&E approval, a primary design consideration was to contain and diffuse any noise emanating from the area.

The main playspace is on the lower rear level and contains a dry creek bed (with bridge and water pump), a huge sand-play area, a slide mound, a shaded stage, balance beams, two highly utilised raised vegetable and herb garden beds and numerous naturally shaded small group spots. Various pathways of different materials link all components of the playspace. Again because of the conditions of the L&E approval, fences are of an unusual height and design to contain and diffuse any noise emanating from the area.

7 Wool Felt Play Mats that Inspire Open-Ended Fun | Inhabitots

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 01:49:00 +0000

7 Wool Felt Play Mats that Inspire Open-Ended Fun | Inhabitots

Full article can be read from the link above.

Amazing felt and woollen natural playspaces for the mind. If you love these you may also like the Happy Whimsical Hearts blog, they have numerous articles and tutorials on making felt/woollen and wooden settings.

Teachers can give technology byte

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 02:14:00 +0000

Teachers can give technology byte - Opinion SMH

Greg Whitby is the executive director of 78 Catholic schools in western Sydney and author of Educating Gen Wi-fi: How to make schools relevant for 21st century learners.

"Technology alone cannot come up with these creative strategies - that is the realm of the teacher: recognising the needs of students and marrying them with the capabilities of technology to get the best possible learning experiences and outcomes."

Full article can be read from the link above.

We can't just ''add a pinch of technology and stir''.

One of the biggest mistakes we can make in education today is thinking that delivering computers to every student or every learning space is automatically delivering a quality 21st-century education. In a world where the range of technologies available to us and the rapid rate of change often overwhelm us, the simplest approach is to adopt the technology we are most familiar with and hang on to it. In doing so, we are behaving as though we are at the end of the digital revolution and not at the beginning of it.

....... The role of technology in learning is to engage students and to enhance the efforts of teachers. It is the skills that are developed, and the knowledge that is gained by using the technology, not the technology itself that is important. We must keep our eye on the end game at all times - delivering relevant learning to set our children conﬁdently on the path to lifelong learning to ensure they are equipped for today's world.

A room decked out with laptops and iPods with access to high-speed wireless broadband is not a rich learning environment on its own.

The interactions between teacher and students and between the students themselves bring the environment to life and present opportunities for the technology to be useful in learning. The tools that have the most impact are those that allow for interactivity.

There is little difference between an old-style overhead projector and a data projector if what is being displayed on them is the same. Rather than showing students a static map of a country, show them a short video on the country and display some useful websites for them to follow up. Technology should be used to allow students to get involved in their learning in a way that has not been possible.

Technology alone cannot come up with these creative strategies - that is the realm of the teacher: recognising the needs of students and marrying them with the capabilities of technology to get the best possible learning experiences and outcomes.

Fears over stressed children as how-to books race off shelves

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 02:11:00 +0000

Fears over stressed children as how-to books race off shelves

''Rote learning and drilling are things from the dark past and we have to be very careful not to resurrect these … at the expense of a child's love of learning.''

Full article can be read from the link above.

Publishing houses printing how-to guides and NAPLAN-specific workbooks have found themselves winners as parents clamour for help in maximising their children's scores.

Hinkler Books issued its own set of NAPLAN-style workbooks and preparation tests in December and already they have proved a sell-out.

The company's product manager, Helen O'Dare, said she was surprised the original 60,000 print-run of books aimed at the year 3 and year 5 audience had sold out four times over.

''It's been extraordinary. We knew they would be popular but this is extraordinary,'' Ms O'Dare said.
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She said the books differentiated from the competition by being ''bright, non-threatening and including sticker rewards''.

But Australian Education Union ACT branch secretary Glenn Fowler said they were a scary illustration of how NAPLAN had begun to exert its dominance in schooling.

''The NAPLAN tests are not designed to be practised or rehearsed,'' Mr Fowler said.

''The tests are a one-off snapshot of a particular student cohort at a particular point in time, a full 10 months prior to the publication of results.''

He said it was understandable in the current climate that parents and carers felt anxious about wanting to do the best for their children. But reports of students feeling so anxious about sitting NAPLAN that they had been sick were not new and parents needed to understand NAPLAN was ''not the HSC for seven-year-olds.''

''Parents can be reassured that schooling is about a great deal more than these crude standardised tests. Every day, teachers are at work educating the whole child and providing the broadest of learning experiences.......

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - Anu Partanen - The Atlantic

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 05:53:00 +0000

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - Anu Partanen - The Atlantic:

A great article. The Australian Government education bod's could learn a lot. Creativity, accountability, equity! Which is why I'm sure they'll pay attention to it....in thirty or forty years.

Full article can be read from the link above.

Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point.

The small Nordic country of Finland used to be known -- if it was known for anything at all -- as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone giant. But lately Finland has been attracting attention on global surveys of quality of life --Newsweek ranked it number one last year -- and Finland's national education system has been receiving particular praise, because in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world.

Finland's schools owe their newfound fame primarily to one study: the PISA survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top. Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best.

Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation's education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle.

So there was considerable interest in a recent visit to the U.S. by one of the leading Finnish authorities on education reform, Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? Earlier this month, Sahlberg stopped by the Dwight School in New York City to speak with educators and students, and his visit received national media attention and generated much discussion.

And yet it wasn't clear that Sahlberg's message was actually getting through. As Sahlberg put it to me later, there are certain things nobody in America really wants to talk about.

During the afternoon that Sahlberg spent at the Dwight School, a photographer from the New York Times jockeyed for position with Dan Rather's TV crew as Sahlberg participated in a roundtable chat with students. The subsequent article in the Times about the event would focus on Finland as an "intriguing school-reform model."

Yet one of the most significant things Sahlberg said passed practically unnoticed. "Oh," he mentioned at one point, "and there are no private schools in Finland."

This notion may seem difficult for an American to digest, but it's true. Only a small number of independent schools exist in Finland, and even they are all publicly financed. None is allowed to charge tuition fees. There are no private universities, either. This means that practically every person in Finland attends public school, whether for pre-K or a Ph.D.

The irony of Sahlberg's making this comment during a talk at the Dwight School seemed obvious. Like many of America's best schools, Dwight is a private institution that costs high-school students upward of $35,000 a year to attend -- not to mention that Dwight, in particular, is run for profit, an increasing trend in the U.S. Yet no one in the room commented on Sahlberg's statement. I found this surprising. Sahlberg himself did not.

Sahlberg knows what Americans like to talk about when it comes to education, because he's become their go-to guy in Finland. The son of two teachers, he grew up in a Finnish school. He taught mathematics and physics in a junior high school in Helsinki, worked his way through a variety of positions in the Finnish Ministry of Education, and spent years as an education expert at the OECD, the World Bank, and other international organizations.

Now, in addition to his other duties, Sahlberg hosts about a hundred visits a year by foreign educators, including many Americans, who want to know the secret of Finland's success. Sahlberg's new book is partly an attempt to help answer the questions he always gets asked.

From his point of view, Americans are consistently obsessed with certain questions: How can you keep track of students' performance if you don't test them constantly? How can you improve teaching if you have no accountability for bad teachers or merit pay for good teachers? How do you foster competition and engage the private sector? How do you provide school choice?

The answers Finland provides seem to run counter to just about everything America's school reformers are trying to do.

For starters, Finland has no standardized tests. The only exception is what's called the National Matriculation Exam, which everyone takes at the end of a voluntary upper-secondary school, roughly the equivalent of American high school.

Instead, the public school system's teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher. Periodically, the Ministry of Education tracks national progress by testing a few sample groups across a range of different schools.

As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. "There's no word for accountability in Finnish," he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."

For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.

And while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable. In his book Sahlberg quotes a line from Finnish writer named Samuli Paronen: "Real winners do not compete." It's hard to think of a more un-American idea, but when it comes to education, Finland's success shows that the Finnish attitude might have merits. There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland. The main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools, but cooperation.

Finally, in Finland, school choice is noticeably not a priority, nor is engaging the private sector at all. Which brings us back to the silence after Sahlberg's comment at the Dwight School that schools like Dwight don't exist in Finland.

"Here in America," Sahlberg said at the Teachers College, "parents can choose to take their kids to private schools. It's the same idea of a marketplace that applies to, say, shops. Schools are a shop and parents can buy what ever they want. In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same."

Herein lay the real shocker. As Sahlberg continued, his core message emerged, whether or not anyone in his American audience heard it.

Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.

Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.

In the Finnish view, as Sahlberg describes it, this means that schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.

In fact, since academic excellence wasn't a particular priority on the Finnish to-do list, when Finland's students scored so high on the first PISA survey in 2001, many Finns thought the results must be a mistake. But subsequent PISA tests confirmed that Finland -- unlike, say, very similar countries such as Norway -- was producing academic excellence through its particular policy focus on equity.

That this point is almost always ignored or brushed aside in the U.S. seems especially poignant at the moment, after the financial crisis and Occupy Wall Street movement have brought the problems of inequality in America into such sharp focus. The chasm between those who can afford $35,000 in tuition per child per year -- or even just the price of a house in a good public school district -- and the other "99 percent" is painfully plain to see.

Pasi Sahlberg goes out of his way to emphasize that his book Finnish Lessons is not meant as a how-to guide for fixing the education systems of other countries. All countries are different, and as many Americans point out, Finland is a small nation with a much more homogeneous population than the United States.

Yet Sahlberg doesn't think that questions of size or homogeneity should give Americans reason to dismiss the Finnish example. Finland is a relatively homogeneous country -- as of 2010, just 4.6 percent of Finnish residents had been born in another country, compared with 12.7 percent in the United States. But the number of foreign-born residents in Finland doubled during the decade leading up to 2010, and the country didn't lose its edge in education. Immigrants tended to concentrate in certain areas, causing some schools to become much more mixed than others, yet there has not been much change in the remarkable lack of variation between Finnish schools in the PISA surveys across the same period.

Samuel Abrams, a visiting scholar at Columbia University's Teachers College, has addressed the effects of size and homogeneity on a nation's education performance by comparing Finland with another Nordic country: Norway. Like Finland, Norway is small and not especially diverse overall, but unlike Finland it has taken an approach to education that is more American than Finnish. The result? Mediocre performance in the PISA survey. Educational policy, Abrams suggests, is probably more important to the success of a country's school system than the nation's size or ethnic makeup.

Indeed, Finland's population of 5.4 million can be compared to many an American state -- after all, most American education is managed at the state level. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization in Washington, there were 18 states in the U.S. in 2010 with an identical or significantly smaller percentage of foreign-born residents than Finland.

What's more, despite their many differences, Finland and the U.S. have an educational goal in common. When Finnish policymakers decided to reform the country's education system in the 1970s, they did so because they realized that to be competitive, Finland couldn't rely on manufacturing or its scant natural resources and instead had to invest in a knowledge-based economy.

With America's manufacturing industries now in decline, the goal of educational policy in the U.S. -- as articulated by most everyone from President Obama on down -- is to preserve American competitiveness by doing the same thing. Finland's experience suggests that to win at that game, a country has to prepare not just some of its population well, but all of its population well, for the new economy. To possess some of the best schools in the world might still not be good enough if there are children being left behind.

Is that an impossible goal? Sahlberg says that while his book isn't meant to be a how-to manual, it is meant to be a "pamphlet of hope."

"When President Kennedy was making his appeal for advancing American science and technology by putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960's, many said it couldn't be done," Sahlberg said during his visit to New York. "But he had a dream. Just like Martin Luther King a few years later had a dream. Those dreams came true. Finland's dream was that we want to have a good public education for every child regardless of where they go to school or what kind of families they come from, and many even in Finland said it couldn't be done."

Clearly, many were wrong. It is possible to create equality. And perhaps even more important -- as a challenge to the American way of thinking about education reform -- Finland's experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.

The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.

Gym Class Isn’t Just Fun and Games Anymore - NYTimes.com

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 05:42:00 +0000

Gym Class Isn’t Just Fun and Games Anymore - NYTimes.com

Firstly when was gym class ever fun and games? and secondly what's wrong with fun and games as a developmental avenue. I get sick of talking to people who believe that unless its a structured adult directed activity, then its a waste of time and energy. They perceive little souls as being on an educational conveyer belt and their job to process them to whatever the current Deptartment of ED. paramenters are (this week). Because unless they're officially processed, they're worthless

Full article can be read from the link above.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — On a recent afternoon, the third graders in Sharon Patelsky’s class reviewed words like “acronym,” “clockwise” and “descending,” as well as math concepts like greater than, less than and place values.

Books shared space with basketballs in the equipment room at Manatee Elementary School in Lake Worth, Fla. During gym class.

Ms. Patelsky, the physical education teacher at Everglades Elementary School here, instructed the students to count by fours as they touched their elbows to their knees during a warm-up. They added up dots on pairs of dice before sprinting to round mats imprinted with mathematical symbols. And while in push-up position, they balanced on one arm and used the other (“Alternate!” Ms. Patelsky urged. “That’s one of your vocabulary words”) to stack oversize Lego blocks in columns labeled “ones,” “tens” and “hundreds.”

“I don’t work for Parks and Recreation,” said Ms. Patelsky, explaining the unorthodox approach to what has traditionally been one of the few breaks from the academic routine during the school day. “I am a teacher first.”

Spurred by an intensifying focus on student test scores in math and English as well as a desire to incorporate more health and fitness information, more school districts are pushing physical education teachers to move beyond soccer, kickball and tennis to include reading, writing and arithmetic as well. New standards for English and math that have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia recommend that teachers in a wide variety of subjects incorporate literacy instruction and bring more “informational text” into the curriculum. Many states have interpreted these standards to include physical education and have developed recommendations and curriculum for districts and teachers to incorporate literacy skills and informational text into gym classes.

But some parents say they object to the way testing is creeping into every corner of school life. And some educators worry that pushing academics into P.E. class could defeat its primary purpose.

While generations of bookish but clumsy children who feared being the last pick for the dodge ball team may welcome the injection of math and reading into gym class, the push is also motivated by a simple fight for survival by physical education departments.

.....Across the country, P.E. teachers now post vocabulary lists on gym walls, ask students to test Newton’s Laws of Motion as they toss balls, and give quizzes on parts of the skeleton or food groups.

At Deep Creek Elementary School in Chesapeake, Va., children count in different languages during warm-up exercises and hop on letter mats to spell out words during gym class.....

Free Range Kids » Mind-boggling SENSE About Play, Injuries & Rules

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 23:09:00 +0000

Free Range Kids » Mind-boggling SENSE About Play, Injuries & Rules

Loving this piece from Lenore at Free Range Kids....All I can say is halle-bloody-lujah. Just when you thought common-sense had become extinct, killed off by the flick and tick merchants at the insurance companies and and their simpering government knee-jerk reaction experts.

Full article can be read from the link above.

The highlights -

Look at this article, “Call to Ditch Red Tape on Playtime Safety”: …Paperwork designed to protect children at play can be discarded, according to “seminal” guidelines issued by the Health and Safety Executive. In a plain-speaking statement,it dismisses the “misguided security blanket” of reams of paperwork that purport to prevent children from harm.

The statement went on to say that safety assessments should focus on “the real risk, not the trivial and fanciful.” Moreover, it begged bureaucrats to understand that looking at play solely through the lens of risk and liability has meant losing sight of the fact it is, overwhelmingly, health and good – not crazy and dangerous.

My friends at Common Good, the organization that tries to cut red tape and restore common sense, are, of course, thrilled that a department devoted to “health and safety” is “analyzing real health and safety instead of red herrings and black swans.” As a policy analyst there, Ben Miller, put it:

The biggest risk in most play areas isn’t bruises or scraped knees, it’s the ubiquitous fear of lawsuits that leads to red tape and replaces common sense with paranoia. Our mantra at Common Good is that people, not rules, make tings happen. We can’t regulate away every conceivable danger, but we can empower administrators to look out for children’s best interests – not lawyer’s.

The Health & Safety Executive outlined what it means to “strike the right balance” when it comes to legislating what’s allowed at playgrounds:

* Weigh the risks and benefits when designing playgrounds and activities. (Not just the risks!)

*Understand that the purpose of risk control is not to eliminate all risk, which is, of course impossible. Instead, the statement asks us all – the government and the people – to accept that the possibility “of even serious or life threatening injuries cannot be eliminated.”

*... our goal cannot be to continually reduce risk, nor demand “detailed assessments aimed at high-risk play activities” when examining low-risk activities.

Making a splash! Council invests in outdoor water play for nursery children - News centre - City of Edinburgh Council

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 10:42:00 +0000

Making a splash! Council invests in outdoor water play for nursery children - News centre - City of Edinburgh Council

Full article can be read from the link above.

As it should be...........

"We firmly believe that young children should have the best available play environments and we want more children to experience outdoor, natural play during their time with us. The investment will benefit young children for many years to come and put this Council at the forefront of delivering high quality nursery provision for the city's children."

New childcare hygiene rules throw candles in the bin

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 01:53:00 +0000

New childcare hygiene rules throw candles in the bin

My feelings on this story are summarised below.

A report on the introduction of loose materials to three primary schools in North Lanarkshire

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 01:46:00 +0000

All I can say is wow! phenomenal!

A report on the introduction of loose materials to three primary schools in North Lanarkshire

http://www.playlink.org/pubs/This_place_is_like_a_building_site.pdf

How kids can reconnect with nature on the playground - The Globe and Mail

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 02:54:00 +0000

How kids can reconnect with nature on the playground - The Globe and Mail

You'll have to excuse me if these next few items aren't timely. I save them when I see them and rarely have time to post them. Regardless of when they were written they're still very pertinent.

A great piece highlighting the naturalistic play movement in Canada. A big hello to all the expatriate Australian Burkes in Edmonton.

Full article can be read from the link above.

An earlier generation of kids may have spent all their free time playing in the woods, but in today’s world of helicopter parenting and stranger danger, letting their children do the same is unthinkable for many parents.

Now, park designers and officials as well as school boards are trying to reacquaint kids with nature, not by sending them into the forest, but by creating what are called natural playgrounds. “Connecting to nature is something that’s becoming more and more important everywhere,” says Adam Bienenstock.

.......This week, the Toronto District School Board rejected a plan to sell off playground land to help pay for capital projects, reaffirming the importance of wide-open spaces to children’s development.

The movement to swap swings, slides and monkey bars for boulders, grassy hills and trees is gaining ground across Canada, the United States and other countries. Advocates say natural playgrounds prompt much more imaginative free play, foster social interaction and cut down on bullying, and encourage the sort of risk-taking some experts say overcautious parenting has been unintentionally blocking.

.......With more people than ever now living in urban environments, there is a greater recognition of the importance of connecting kids with nature through play.

......Natural playgrounds typically include five elements, according to Mr. Bienenstock: rolling topography, boulders, logs, pathways and large trees and shrubs. The specifics are usually reflective of local surroundings....Traditional playgrounds decide for kids in advance how they will play: Swings are for swinging; slides are for sliding. But in a natural playground, it is not immediately clear how their elements should be incorporated, so it is up to kids to use their imaginations.

.....Research has also shown that natural playgrounds alter the way children in them relate to one another.
“In a commercial playground, usually what ends up happening is that the most athletically gifted child ends up choosing the game and running the playground,” Mr. Belair says. “With a naturalized playground, kids tend to play more co-operatively. … There’s a wider variety of play elements involved than just who can climb the fastest or the highest.”

Studies have reinforced the idea that these environments reduce bullying, nurture collaborative skills and stimulate social interaction. Researchers at the University of Tennessee last year found that children more than doubled the time they spent playing in natural playgrounds compared with playgrounds with traditional wood and plastic materials.

.......... “There is a thing nature provides for us that is called ‘graduated challenge’ that our current play structures are not doing a very good job of,” Mr. Bienenstock says. “Have you ever seen parents’ behaviour on one of these play structures? They are walking around with their hands out, following these kids from the ground, ready to catch them.” By comparison, in a natural playground with boulders of different sizes and shapes, the kid big enough to be able to get to the top of the larger boulder is probably big enough to take the fall from it too, Mr. Bienenstock says.

Todd Catchpole, a parks manager at Five Rivers MetroParks in Ohio, which began developing natural play sites several years ago, believes that many of the injuries children suffer on traditional playground equipment are simply the result of boredom. “So what do they do? They try and go up the slide backward or jump off the top of the platform for the slide, using it in ways it wasn’t intended,” he says.

.....Ellen Sandseter, a professor of psychology in Norway and one of the world’s leading experts on the importance of playground risk-taking, says a natural playground is “the most challenging environment. It has challenges for all children, all ages, all sizes,” she says.
Consider the difference between swinging on monkey bars and climbing a tree, Prof. Sandseter says.
“The bars in climbing equipment have a certain centimetre distance between them and it’s not really challenging. They could be blindfolded and climb it,” she says. “But in a tree, there’s different distances between branches. You have to feel the branches [to know if it will support you]. You have to constantly take a lot of risk decisions and evaluate your environment. … It’s no doubt nature environments are better in every way.”

.....The project under way at the Toronto French School hopes to help students enjoy the quiet repose that only nature can provide, Mr. Godfrey says. But it should also let them test their boundaries, even if that means a few scrapes from a fall off a boulder or a tree branch, he adds. “We’re not doing any good by bubble-wrapping kids.”

Nature, children and play - timesofmalta.com

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 02:45:00 +0000

Nature, children and play - timesofmalta.com

You'll have to excuse me if these next few items aren't timely. I save them when I see them and rarely have time to post them. Regardless of when they were written they're still very pertinent.

A short but informative article reiterating the benefits of the nature and naturalistic learning experiences in early childhood learming environments

Full article can be read from the link above.

In today’s world, children are very restricted. There is no such thing as ‘free’ play anymore. Children are no longer allowed to play on pavements, streets, alleys and vacant plots. It is no longer safe for children to wander off alone. Many children are no longer allowed to roam their neighbourhoods unless accompanied by adults.

Moreover, some working parents cannot supervise their children after school and, as a result, children have to stay indoors or attend supervised after-school activities. Children’s lives have become structured and scheduled by adults who think they are acting in their children’s best interest. These adults are convinced that sending their children to private lessons after school will make them more successful as adults.

Unfortunately, even schoolyards are not designed to promote a natural playing environment for children. The surplus energy theory, developed by 19th-century psychologist Herbert Spencer, may have contributed to this. According to this theory, the main purpose for children’s play is to get rid of surplus energy. Although the theory was rejected by researchers and developmental theorists, it still influenced the design of children’s outdoor school environments.

As a result of Spencer’s theory, schoolyards are seen as areas for physical play during breaks and sporting activities, where children ‘burn off steam’, and not as a means of providing rich educational opportunities, particularly in the area of social skills and environmental learning.

Human nature itself has also contributed to this design paradigm. Our common experiences usually shape what we conceive as conventional and, therefore, the norm by which we operate.

When most adults were children, schoolyards consisted of asphalted areas with fixed playground equipment such as swings and slides, and sports fields, and used solely during breaks. So most adults see this as the appropriate model for a schoolyard.

Research shows that young children who have not yet adapted to the man-made world consistently prefer the natural landscape to built environments. Moreover, studies have revealed various benefits of regular play in nature.

Children that are in contact with nature:
• Score higher on tests of concentration and self-discipline;
• Show more advanced motor fitness, including coordination, balance and agility, and they are sick less often;
• Are more imaginative and creative;
• Are less stressed;
• Are not generally engaged in bullying;
• Develop powers of observation and creativity and a sense of peace and being at one with the world;
• Are more imaginative and curious;
• Have more positive feelings about each other;
• Are more socially interactive;
• Develop an affinity to, and love of nature, along with a positive environmental ethic.

According to Harvard biologist Edward Wilson, the need to affiliate with other species is built into our genes.
He believes that the need to connect with nature is a reflection of our evolutionary roots. However, in our busy urban lives we increasingly work against our biophilic needs by instilling a biophobia. This describes the condition whereby one develops an adverse reaction to nature and only feels comfortable in a man-made environment.

Children who are constantly removed from nature may develop this condition and may also refuse contact with nature and dislike or fear plants and animals. In contrast to the conventional schools, contact with nature is central to the educational curriculum in alternative schools whereby in the pre-school, kindergarten and primary years, children are encouraged to directly experience nature.

Children play outside, preferably in gardens that mirror the changing seasons through the changing plant life. The classroom furnishings as well as all toys are made from natural materials such as wood, stone, pottery, wool, cotton, silk and linen. The emphasis is on working with the materials of nature through planting and harvesting, craft work and creative play. The commonly used dolls are also made of natural materials and have simple expressions and allow natural postures. The first years are thus years of nature experience.

Nature-based playground coming to life in Concord - Concord, MA - The Concord Journal

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 02:35:00 +0000

Nature-based playground coming to life in Concord - Concord, MA - The Concord Journal

You'll have to excuse me if these next few items aren't timely. I save them when I see them and rarely have time to post them. Regardless of when they were written they're still very pertinent.

In my mind playspaces should always be "open-ended, creative and imaginative".

Full article can be read from the link above.

The Playscape at Ripley will be a place where people of all ages and abilities can play, relax and interact with their environment.

“It’s about getting people outside,” said Jennifer Saxe, alumni relations and development coordinator for Concord Children’s Center. “We want people to be outside in ways that are open-ended, creative and imaginative. The Playscape will keep things creative for adults and kids.”

The Playscape at Ripley, a play area that will “purposefully connect individuals of all abilities with nature; foster cognitive, social and emotional growth; and encourage young and old alike to get outside,”

....Since before 2008, the Concord Children’s Center, along with other early childhood organizations in Concord, have discussed their concerns about the lack of availability to unstructured nature-based play areas for.......... a 2007 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics warned of the “decline in children’s spontaneous and creative play – a decline which can negatively impact children’s language development, collaborative social skills and motor coordination and balance.”

.....Dan Stimson, assistant director of stewardship at Sudbury Valley Trustees, said Gowing’s Swamp is a pretty special place and added that the Playscape project ties in well with the Trustees’ mission to protect the land and make it available to all who are interested in visiting.“One of the worries amongst conservationists today is that kids aren’t getting outside enough,” Stimson said. “There’s a lack of getting kids into the woods. This type of project acts as a bridge and gets more of the community out there.”

Recess Is as Important as Class Time, Pediatricians Say | TIME.com

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 02:32:00 +0000

Recess Is as Important as Class Time, Pediatricians Say | TIME.com

You'll have to excuse me if these next few items aren't timely. I save them when I see them and rarely have time to post them. Regardless of when they were written they're still very pertinent.

Their are a lot of different venues for children to learn. Reducing, removing or institutionalising what happens during recesses destroys social development and an integral opportunity for knowledge consolidation.

Full article can be read from the link above.

Playtime can be as important as class time for helping students perform their best.

Recess is most children’s favorite period, and parents and teachers should encourage that trend, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Recess can be a critical time for development and social interaction, and in a new policy statement published in the journal Pediatrics, pediatricians from the AAP support the importance of having a scheduled break in the school day. “Children need to have downtime between complex cognitive challenges,” says Dr. Robert Murray, a pediatrician and professor of human nutrition at the Ohio State University who is a co-author of the statement. “They tend to be less able to process information the longer they are held to a task. It’s not enough to just switch from math to English. You actually have to take a break.”

The AAP committee that developed the statement began its research in 2007, expecting to discover that recess is important as a physical outlet for children. What they found, however, was that playtime’s benefits extend beyond the physical. “We came to the realization that it really affects social, emotional and cognitive development in a much deeper way than we’d expected,” she says. “It helps children practice conflict resolution if we allow them unstructured play, and it lets them come back to class more ready to learn and less fidgety.”

The policy could be a lifeline for the dwindling role recess plays in the school day as districts trim budgets and hours of instruction, and squeeze more academic subjects into existing or even fewer school days, often sacrificing recess in the process.

......It’s also important to distinguish recess from physical education, says Ramstetter. While gym class offers kids a chance to stretch their legs and get their heart rate up, it is still considered instructional time, with very different goals from those of the unstructured downtime of recess. Likewise, it’s important to let kids play what they want — that means playground monitors shouldn’t organize kids to play kickball or soccer. “When it’s structured, it’s not a break in the day,” she says.

...... That understanding reflects a growing body of research documenting the power of some time off for improving concentration and even creativity.

Education | Back to Nature Network

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 02:25:00 +0000

Education | Back to Nature Network

You'll have to excuse me if these next few items aren't timely. I save them when I see them and rarely have time to post them. Regardless of when they were written they're still very pertinent.

A great guide and tool for educators intent on introducing nature and naturalistic learning opportunities to their curriculum. Regardless of where you are the experiences and outcomes are adaptable.

Full article can be read from the link above.

The Back to Nature Network teacher’s guide, Into Nature, is a unique teachers’ guide that enables the teaching of all Ontario school curriculum subjects outdoors in nature on a regular basis. Content of the guide includes logistics, resources and learning experiences for teaching in nature. All learning experiences are linked to Ontario curriculum documents and include: Nature 101, a series of five phases to move from the indoor classroom to the outdoor learning space; fifty Nature2Go activities; and full lessons that last one class period or more.

Download the English-language version of Into Nature.

Cover Story — December 2012 | San Diego Metro Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 02:22:00 +0000

The Public Realm The Importance of Public Spaces in Our Neighborhoods

You'll have to excuse me if these next few items aren't timely. I save them when I see them and rarely have time to post them. Regardless of when they were written they're still very pertinent.

A very pertinent article reiterating the need for natural public spaces within the urban environment and what happens to the population when they are removed or commercialised

Full article can be read from the link above.

The end of November marked the beginning of construction of a new public plaza in Downtown San Diego.........This and other recent examples point to our recent re-understanding of parks, plazas and open spaces as critical components of our urban environment. The San Diego Union editorialized: “Park improvement is among the most important undertakings now before the city. It should have the cordial co-operation of all.”

...... More recently, a column in the San Diego Union-Tribune asked, “What, then, is the measure of a great city or region? Its education systems? Its arts? Its business inventiveness? All of the above, but the most overlooked measure is a city’s dedication to public space.”

......There is also a growing awareness that the quality of the public realm is a critical element in quality economic development. People want to be in places where they can feel comfortable and enjoy. These spaces can be parks, plazas, and our canyons and even pleasant sidewalks. And they want these things nearby to where they live and work........ Richard M. Daley, the former mayor of Chicago, put it this way: “Having a place to relax, play, take part in community events and participate in sports and recreational activities is truly key to an individuals well-being and the overall health of a community.”

......The addition to Horton Plaza is an example of a very different approach — a park replacing a not-so-old department store in an active, vibrant shopping center. Another example is the recent action by the San Diego City Council to dedicate more than 6,000 acres of open space under the auspices of Sen. Christine Kehoe’s Senate Bill 323, and the advocacy of the Canyonlands Organization. The goal of the Canyonlands group is to connect our canyons to our neighborhoods.

Preservation of our canyons and hillsides is a long-standing and continuing initiative of the region. Perhaps why we do it can best be summed up by the following from the 2006 report by the group San Diego Civic Solutions, “Canyonlands, The Creation of a San Diego Regional Canyonlands Park”: “Our canyons bring us nourishment, maintain our health and ventilate our lives. They are our lungs and bronchial tubes.” And the canyons define our neighborhoods and provide us with nearby nature.......

Cornell Launches Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Animal Sounds, with Recordings Going Back to 1929 | Open Culture

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 02:09:00 +0000

Cornell Launches Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Animal Sounds, with Recordings Going Back to 1929 | Open Culture

You'll have to excuse me if these next few items aren't timely. I save them when I see them and rarely have time to post them. Regardless of when they were written they're still very pertinent.

What a marvellous trove of material, ideas and information to bring into the classroom.

Full article can be read from the link above.

Ornithologists and bird watchers rejoice. After a dozen years, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library has fully digitized its nearly 150,000 audio recordings (a total running time of 7,513 hours), representing close to 9,000 different species, such as the very unsettling-sounding Barred Owl (above). While the collection also includes the sounds of whales, elephants, frogs, primates, and other animals, the primary emphasis here is on birds (it is a Lab of Ornithology, after all), and there is an incredible range of calls. Cornell recommends some of the highlights below:

Earliest recording: Cornell Lab founder Arthur Allen was a pioneer in sound recording. On a spring day in 1929 he recorded this Song Sparrow sounding much as they do today
Youngest bird: This clip from 1966 records the sounds of an Ostrich chick while it is still inside the egg – and the researchers as they watch

Liveliest wake-up call: A dawn chorus in tropical Queensland, Australia is bursting at the seams with warbles, squeals, whistles, booms and hoots

Best candidate to appear on a John Coltrane record: The indri, a lemur with a voice that is part moan, part jazz clarinet

Most spines tingled: The incomparable voice of a Common Loonon an Adirondacks lake in 1992

Most erratic construction project: the staccato hammering sounds of a walrus under water

Most likely to be mistaken for aliens arriving: Birds-of-paradise make some amazing sounds – here’s the UFO-sound of a Curl-crested Manucode in New Guinea

Whether you’re an enthusiastic birder, practicing scientist, or sound-sample hunter, you’ll find something to blow your mind at the extensive collections of the Macaulay Library. Both amateur and professional naturalists, for example, can acquire, visualize, measure, and analyze animal sounds with a free version of the Cornell Lab’s proprietary interactive sound analysis software, Raven.

If children lose contact with nature they won't fight for it | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 02:06:00 +0000

If children lose contact with nature they won't fight for it | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

You'll have to excuse me if these next few items aren't timely. I save them when I see them and rarely have time to post them. Regardless of when they were written they're still very pertinent.

Nature disconnection, screen substitution, who will be the future stewards....if there is anything left. Love Monbiots' articles.

Full article can be read from the link above.

With half of their time spent at screens, the next generation will be poorly equipped to defend the natural world from harm.'One woe doth tread upon another's heel, So fast they follow". That radical green pressure group PriceWaterhouseCoopers warns that even if the present rate of global decarbonisation were to double, we would still be on course for 6C of warming by the end of the century. Confining the rise to 2C requires a sixfold reduction in carbon intensity: far beyond the scope of current policies.
‘The great indoors has become a far more dangerous

place than the diminished world beyond.'

Illustration by Daniel Pudles

.......A new report shows that the UK has lost 20% of its breeding birds since 1966: once common species such as willow tits, lesser spotted woodpeckers and turtle doves have all but collapsed; even house sparrows have fallen by two thirds. Ash dieback is just one of many terrifying plant diseases, mostly spread by trade. They now threaten our oaks, pines and chestnuts.

So where are the marches, the occupations, the urgent demands for change? While the surveys show that the great majority would like to see the living planet protected, few are prepared to take action. This, I think, reflects a second environmental crisis: the removal of children from the natural world. The young people we might have expected to lead the defence of nature have less and less to do with it.......

There are several reasons for this collapse: parents' irrational fear of strangers and rational fear of traffic, the destruction of the fortifying commons where previous generations played, the quality of indoor entertainment, the structuring of children's time, the criminalisation of natural play. The great indoors, as a result, has become a far more dangerous place than the diminished world beyond. The rise of obesity, rickets and asthma and the decline in cardio-respiratory fitness are well documented.

NAPLAN: is the pain worth it?

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 02:00:00 +0000

NAPLAN: is the pain worth it?

You'll have to excuse me if these next few items aren't timely. I save them when I see them and rarely have time to post them. Regardless of when they were written they're still very pertinent.

Read the article and decide for yourself. Personally I'm exceptionally anti- Naplan (for a number of reasons discussed elsewhere in this Blog)

Full article can be read from the link above.

CHILDREN are suffering stress-related vomiting and sleeplessness as some teachers drill them for months prior to the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), according to the first national study into the impact of the high-stakes testing regime.

The University of Melbourne survey of 8353 teachers and principals raises significant concerns about the ''unintended side-effects'' of NAPLAN, including teaching to the test, a reduction in time devoted to other subjects and a negative impact on student health and staff morale.Almost half of teachers said they held practice NAPLAN tests at least once a week for five months before the tests every May.

About 90 per cent of those surveyed said some students felt stressed before NAPLAN tests, with symptoms including crying, sleeplessness, vomiting and absenteeism.......The study's researchers have called for a national debate into whether there are other ways the data could be collected without the negative impacts revealed in their findings.

''We are narrowing the curriculum in order to test children,'' said lead researcher Nicky Dulfer. ''There are ways we can support numeracy and literacy learning without limiting children's access to other subjects like music, languages and art.'................

Gender-neutral toy catalogues leave the boy holding the baby

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 01:58:00 +0000

Gender-neutral toy catalogues leave the boy holding the baby

You'll have to excuse me if these next few items aren't timely. I save them when I see them and rarely have time to post them. Regardless of when they were written they're still very pertinent.

Good on you Toy's R US. I note you still have the blue and pink strollers, however it's still a step in the right direction (even if it is just tapping in to current developmental thought to shift product)

Full article can be read from the link above.

SWEDEN'S largest toy chain has pictured boys holding baby dolls and girls playing with swords and guns in its Christmas catalogue.

''For several years, we have found that the gender debate has grown so strong in the Swedish market that we … have had to adjust,'' said Jan Nyberg, director of sales at Top Toy, the franchise-holder for Toys 'R' Us.

The country's advertising watchdog reprimanded the company for gender discrimination three years ago following complaints over outdated gender roles in the 2008 Christmas catalogue, which featured boys dressed as superheroes and girls playing princess.

A comparison between this year's Toys 'R' Us catalogues in Sweden and Denmark, where Top Toy is also the franchisee, showed that a boy wielding a toy machinegun in the Danish edition had been replaced by a girl in Sweden.
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Elsewhere in the catalogue, a girl was deleted from the page depicting Hello Kitty items, a girl holding a baby doll was replaced by a boy, and in sister chain BR's catalogue, a young girl's pink T-shirt was turned light blue.

Top Toy, Sweden's largest toy retailer by number of stores, said it had received ''training and guidance'' from the Swedish advertising watchdog, which is a self-regulatory agency.

''We have produced the catalogues for both BR and Toys 'R' Us in a completely different way this year,'' Mr Nyberg said. ''With the new gender thinking, there is nothing that is right or wrong. It's not a boy or a girl thing, it's a toy for children.''

Photos of two new finished 2012 projects.

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 02:14:00 +0000

With a busy work schedule I've only recently had the chance to get out and take photos of two projects that were finished in late 2012. Both were built by J M Landscapes and I'm told by the centres both new playspaces have been enthusiastically embraced. More photos can be found in Previous Projects.

The first, MECIS, or the Macarthur Early Childhood Intervention Service in Leumeah is an early childhood intervention program for children from birth to school-entry age with developmental delays and disabilities, and their families. Whilst their playspace is much smaller than most it is no less important. * Note: MECIS is not bound by the Education and Care Services National Regulations

The design brief for this project was to,

* Remove the fixed play equipment that dominated the playspace and create a natural sensory playspace

that provided universal access for children with restricted mobility,

* Provide inclusive, stable, activity venues, of optimal height, that can be utilised for multiple activities for

children who may have problems with Sensory Integration (SI). For example the perspex table can be

used to extend sand play from the sand pit, ball play or sensory art activities. The music panel can be

seeded with traditional and home-made musical instruments, or toys that make sounds, as a means to

introduce sound, music and song or to facilitate and augment sensory story telling.

The second project was the St Andrews Kindergarten, in Abbotsford, Sydney who now have a groovy new tank fed sand and water play area, a see through perspex worm farm and A multi-purpose mound for running, climbing, rolling and sitting.

The fenced apex of the mound can be utilized by children as private areas for the individual or group. The mound also doubles as makeshift seating for small group work. A set of hooks embedded in the wooden apex of the mound allows educators to change the rope ladder for two knotted climbing ropes, a thick cargo rope, a section of cargo net, etc.

The large mound encompasses a tunnel that whilst giving the children the impression of being a secret , private space is still easily supervised. A perspex panel built into the apex deck allows light and communication between those children outside the tunnel and those within.

independent gardening ltd: How on earth....

noreply@blogger.com (Tess Michaels) — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 22:46:00 +0000

independent gardening ltd: How on earth....

An interesting piece from " Independent Gardening", all I can say is Ditto. It's interesting that this disease last seen in the 17/18th century, has only been "reported" as making a resurgence in the UK since 2007. Note "reported" and UK. It could be in other similar climates for longer but has only "existed" since it was formerly reported.

From PubMed Health
Rickets is a disorder caused by a lack of vitamin D, calcium, or phosphate. It leads to softening and weakening of the bones.

Causes, incidence, and risk factorsVitamin D helps the body control calcium and phosphate levels. If the blood levels of these minerals become too low, the body may produce hormones that cause calcium and phosphate to be released from the bones. This leads to weak and soft bones.

Vitamin D is absorbed from food or produced by the skin when exposed to sunlight. Lack of vitamin D production by the skin may occur in people who live in climates with little exposure to sunlight, must stay indoors, work indoors during the daylight hours

From Wickepedia

Cases have been reported in Britain in recent years[10] of rickets in children of many social backgrounds caused by insufficient production in the body of vitamin D because the sun's ultraviolet light was not reaching the skin due to use of strong sunblock, too much "covering up" in sunlight, or not getting out into the sun. Other cases have been reported among the children of some ethnic groups in which mothers avoid exposure to the sun for religious or cultural reasons, leading to a maternal shortage of vitamin D;[11][12] and people with darker skins need more sunlight to maintain vitamin D levels. The British Medical Journal reported in 2010 that doctors in Newcastle on Tyne saw 20 cases of rickets per year.

Two other interesting articles debating causes and cures Fortifying foods and Calls for food additives suggest diet plays an equally important part in the resurgence.

Full article can be read from the link above.

"Okay I am going to have a rant....... How on earth in today's age can we have allowed Rickets to resurface again in children within the UK? Technically Rickets is caused by severe malnutrition (do you remember the pictures of the famine in Biafra with children with bloated stomachs and bent legs?) or a lack of Vitamin D and calcium. Vitamin D comes from sunshine and is vital for the absorption of calcium. Ergo we need sun on our skins - too much sunscreen, and you block it - but first of all of course you need to get outside!!!! Are we so far gone as parents that we need to keep our children safe inside on computers, tablets and Iphones? Have we become so lazy that we have lost the ability to play; to take our children for walks? Have we become so obsessed with technology, with the internet, with 'e-games' that we have forgotten that our children need to interact with people and nature - not a wretched screen on a computer (she says as she types this on the internet). I find this fact deeply, deeply shocking. I get scared for our future as human beings. We have a responsibility to ourselves, our children, our neighbours and the environment. Technology is brilliant but it has a place. It does not teach us how to interact with real people; it does not teach us how to have conversations; nor how to behave. It most certainly does not teach us the consequences of our actions on other people. I dare say I will be shot down in flames for this blog, but I constantly thank God, or the universe, for the fact that I am lucky enough to live in the countryside; to know and to be able to observe the changes in the season. To know that the universe, our planet and nature are unimaginably huge, wonderful, terrifying, awe inspiring and often side splittingly funny. Even in cities it is still possible to look at the sky, walk in the sun and feel the fresh (ish) air on our faces. Sitting inside makes us smaller, somehow less, in ourselves. We lose the wonder of nature in all its magnificence. Sir David Attenborough brings much into our living rooms, but you cannot replace the intricacies and fun of observing our own particular take on nature in our gardens with a quick visit to the Galapagos Islands via TV. I still think that one of the most wonderful sounds on the planet is the sound of a small child laughing as they play. There is an all encompassing, gut wrenching, side splitting one hundred per cent joy in that sound, an innocence and wisdom beyond their age. I hope that we get to hear it more often and not less."