Hello, hello, rusty Keeler here and I’m sitting next to one of my favorite creeks in Ithaca, New York, six Mile Creek. If you listen carefully, you can hear some water sounds, maybe there’ll be some bird sounds. And it’s spring in upstate New York. So if you listen really carefully, you can hear the snow flurries coming down. 

Yep. But you know, that’s okay. We know it’s, we know spring’s coming. I mean, it’s here, but you know, we get, we get the back and forth. What is spring like where you are? What is autumn, like? You know, if you’re in the southern hemisphere it’s autumn. So what’s it like? What’s happening? Yeah. Well I’m so glad you’re listening and I’m glad to be here with you.

And this is episode four. Yeah. We’re not stopping. We’re, we’re rolling here. We’re rocking and rolling. And you know, the real mission is we are putting good things out in the world, you and I. Yeah. Nothing’s gonna stop us. Right? Oh, look at that. Kingfishers. Two kingfisher birds just flew by.

They’re some of my favorite birds. Okay. All right. So yeah, anyway. I was saying we’re, we’re putting good things out in the world. And in unique times, we can be unique also. And part of that is continuing to do our good work. And what we believe in. In our core. So we wanna just stay grounded in ourselves and our beliefs and our values. And keep putting good things out, keep doing our work.

So for me today with you, my work is yeah, talking about play. And today’s episode is what is play, what is play. You know, with the Play Nature Podcast part of it is what is the nature of play? What is play? And so that’s what we’re gonna be diving into today. As always at the end, I will answer some questions from you.

And today’s questions are. Where can you find inexpensive hill slides? You know, we love that natural playscape feature, the hill slide. So are there ways that you can get slides cheaply or freely There sure are. And the other question is tree cookies. What are those? So, alright, so stay tuned for that. 

While in the meantime we will dive into what is play. And teacher Tom Hobson wrote a nice little blurb on the back of My Risky Playbook which is really a book about play. And he, he called me a theorist, Rusty’s work both as a theorist and designer. Causes us to rethink what it means for a child to be free to play, really play.

So he called me a theorist and nobody’s ever called me that before. But I like it. Yeah. And sitting next to a creek here will be a theorist. So today I think we’re gonna dive into the, into. Being a theorist. And then I think that’s more like having theories about things. So today you and I will be theorists as we theorize about play, what is play, and we’ll go to, you know, some far reaching places in the universe to think about where play comes from.

But I wanna start with this, the definition, kind of the standard definition from the play work, profession. Play work a profession and study is study of play and supporting play, advocating for play and running adventure playgrounds and play mobiles and really kind of this work that dedicates itself to play for me.

A lot of the Europeans, you know, in play work, they’ve studied play for a long time, so, they’ve done a lot of work. You know, really fine tuning definitions and fine tuning play principles and we’ll meet some in future episodes, we’ll meet some play workers and really hear from their mouth.

But I love their definition ’cause I think it kind of sums it all up. And they say play is a process that is freely chosen, personally directed, and intrinsically motivated. They go on and say that is. Children and young people determine and control the content and intent of their play by following their own instincts, ideas, and interests in their own way.

For their own reasons. Yeah. So a process that is freely chosen, personally directed, and intrinsically motivated. I think there’s another definition from a preschooler, I think teacher Tom talked about where they say. Play is what I do when nobody tells me what to do. So that’s interesting too. But this idea of.

You know, it’s freely chosen children are doing, so it’s child led play. So not really talking about adult led things or sports things. You know, that might border more on recreation. But I’m gonna kind of talk about this natural, deeply wired part of us and part of children that is play, that’s ancient, that’s it’s beyond humans.

You know, it’s multi-species have play this kind of flow of life. I think that it’s alive too. We think about children’s playing, think about different ages, whether it’s children climbing trees or climbing play equipment, or stirring a soup in a mud kitchen. Doing small motor skills, building fairy huts, or drawing or painting or imaginative play, dramatic play, or being on tricycles, going speedily around tricycle tracks or downhills, you know, it’s all ages.

Could be peekaboo with a baby. His play, peekaboo,

peekaboo. Got your nose. Okay. That’s play adults playing with the young ones. And of course there’s play for elders and for adults and for teens and for all ages. And you know, a lot of times with play outside, adults, outside our circle, maybe think it might be just play. That it’s not serious.

They might not take it seriously. I know a lot of play play folks or educators might think they don’t take it seriously, and yet play is really the most serious thing in the world. Think about preschoolers pouring water. They have the seriousness of a research scientist. Right. They are studying like water.

What is water? How does it move? How does it pour? What happens when it hits the ground? What’s it like in different materials? They’re studying it. They’re observing it. Processing it. They’re making connections. They’re coming up with theories. You know, they are like the great scientists. Asking why things look the way they do.

Why do they move the way they do? Why do they live the way they do? Who am I? You know, that’s what they’re finding out through play. Who am I? Where am I? How does it all work? Buckminster Fuller. People I look up to has inspired me through the years, kind of creator of the geodesic dome inventor futurist said that playgrounds should be renamed research laboratories.

He said children aren’t playing. They are discovering how the universe works. And I would agree with him because play is learning and play is development. And you know, in this last year especially, I’ve been thinking a lot about, and I’m having conversations with folks like you about this kind of difference between development, human development and academics.

And when are they learning? Which is learning. And I would say that play this kind of spontaneous spark of like life and curiosity. Is more important, especially the younger ages, more important than the manmade educational academics. Now, you know, manmade and woman made. But in this case, I’m saying manmade is a bad thing, so I can, you know, if you’re a woman, I’ll, I’ll leave you out of it.

Yeah so this idea of academics, you know, they have this idea of like, we wanna push it, you know, farther, we want kids to read earlier, we want them to, you know, learn math principles earlier. We want their letters, we want them to write and they mean well, right? Those kind of strategies for boosting education, they, they mean well.

But there’s a time for everything. And especially in the early years, it’s time to play and the play. It’s time because that is development. You know, we are programmed to rise up and wonder about the world and start messing with it and learning about it and learning about ourselves and how to make our way in the world.

And that’s the foundation, right? That’s the foundation of. Those future academic things, you know, that children will get into or be subjected to. And so yeah, I think about that learning that the developmental learning through play, that’s not manmade, that’s programmed by the universe. Yeah. It’s in our DNA, like we are sprung with an innate sense of wonder curiosity. Like a clock, like we’re wound to progress step by step, stage by stage. And you know, we are checking out the physical, the sense world. We’re building our bodies through play. Children are building their brains. You know, it is, it is a program thing, like we are wired for it. And so development, if it’s starting in the womb, I.

Right. There’s little bones being made in there. Little fingernails, little hearts, circulatory systems, brain, all that. Okay, that’s starting in there. But when they’re out of the womb, there’s the whole progression of life that’s growing and rising and you know, ultimately becoming an adult. So even babies, you know, they’re programmed right?

To want to move to suddenly realize, oh, that hand belongs to me. How do I move it? How do I get my needs met? I’m gonna reach out with that little hand and learn about the world and I’m gonna taste things. You think about babies tasting, right? They’re putting everything in their mouth and you know, there’s a certain playful.

Pleasure in sucking on a duplo block. Right. You know if I really think back, I, I can feel that, I can feel the duplo block in my mouth as a preto, as, as some sort of a baby. Hmm, hmm. What’s that feel like? And that feels different than, you know, these different things. So they’re exploring the world, they’re wired to explore the world.

And our adult role is to, you know, understand that. Or accept that, believe it, be a believer, and then support it and safeguard it. The atmosphere that the baby is in, the toddler is in, the child is in the atmosphere. What’s what’s happening around them? And then the environment itself. And then we move on to toddlers.

Lemme think about toddlers. Exploring their world. You know, I often think about them, you know, with the natural play scape and the outside world is like these little explorers, these little silent explorers. They’re observing. Go walking up hills and walking downhill, digging in some sand, splashing some water.

You know they’re kinda learning the cause and effect of this world that they find themselves in. And there’s even diabolical play. Is that one of the play patterns? Diabolical plays. Hear me out. For toddlers, you know, they’re studying everything, including what happens if I grab that teddy bear out of Susie’s hand?

What happens? They do it and maybe Susie cries, or Susie hits them or bites them or, you know, and then, you know, we’re always thinking about what’s our adult role. So much of it, because the play is programmed, the play is happening naturally. Our adult role is to just, you know, step in, reinforce for toddlers, some social norms.

You know, help them along as they’re expanding out into their world

preschoolers. Now you could say that that’s like, that’s where the play really kicks in. That’s happening all along, but that, that might be where it’s really kicking in and their brains are working so fast, making so many connections. You know, we on the outside can theorize about what’s going on, but truly there’s a million, billion things going on in their brains, in their bodies, way more than we can comprehend.

You know, we can, we can study it and, and theorize about it but really it’s all happening like building a human being. It’s happening and the pattern is strong. The, the DNA is strong. You know, so if children are playing in the sand, we can think, oh yeah, they’re playing in the sand, but really what’s going on?

Their body is processing their sensory. You know, the sense is. They’re touching sand. What’s it feel like? What does it like when water’s in there? What’s it like when I scoop? What’s it like when I put a bucket? How heavy is that? How, what’s my feeling? My muscles, or which muscles can I really lift this with?

Or can I use two hands now with it? What happens if I throw it? Come on? And that’s when the social norms come back in. But there’s like a million things going on. Math, volume, physics, you know, story language. You know, describing what’s going on. So really there’s a dizzying array of things that are going on when young children are playing.

For me, play for play’s sake is, is it, you know, I don’t need to know all that stuff. There’s so much, you know, bodies, muscles, bones are being built when children are climbing. When children are swinging, brain things are going on. I. Mine. Things are going on. Every, everything’s being built and processed. And so you, like I said, for me play, for play sake’s good enough.

You know, I wanna build spaces that support all that stuff, and yet we also need to be able to put those words on it and we’ll dive into that in future episodes. But, you know, because, you know, we’re believers in play, but we also need to help make other adults believers in play. I. So we need to use the right words as we’re advocating.

If it’s for elementary school, how do we advocate for it? If it is in a preschool program, how do we advocate it for it? If we are a parent, how do we advocate with another parent, with our, with our co-parent? How do we advocate to parents if we are an educator about that this is the way children learn and grow and we’re supporting it.

But then if we step back, like what is, what’s play at its essence, okay, so we know what’s important. We know what’s built in, we know it’s programmed Children program to rise up and play and explore and experiment. What is it? At its essence, I say it’s a spark of like, of light, like art. The imagination and it’s infinite.

Like play the create creative spark of the universe is infinite. Like music, like creativity. Yeah. That there is no end and it keeps coming and there’s no end to children’s ideas because it is like the free spark. And hear me out. I believe that that is like the building block of the universe. I believe that play is that creative spark.

It’s a P of creative spirit

and it, and it might be, I think, how God works whatever the word God means to you, but I think it’s like trying out ideas, playing with ideas. You gotta admit in this world virus, there’s seems to be a sense of fun out there. Duck build platypus and all. But I think play is one of these building blocks of, of like how things work along with love, harmony, and beauty.

And it’s interesting because it is not just humans that play, that have this spirit, this spark. Dogs, raccoons. Last year in Arizona, I watched two raccoons, playfully, roughhouse for 25 minutes. I have video. I’ll show video sometime, just play goofing around, batting each other. And then, you know, sitting next to each other, I’ve seen videos of turtles playing.

I’ve seen videos of turtles playing with dogs. I have seen videos of snakes playing with a ball. So there’s something in there like there is some aliveness inside of us and inside of life on this planet. We wanna make way for it. And what’s interesting, you know, another part of this, it’s all interesting, but one, one part is that in one sense it’s limitless, right?

This idea of like this, it’s infinite. It keeps coming, it keeps rising up in its expression of creativity and yeah. At the same time, it seems to be happening according to a clear set of instructions, DNA, instructions to absorb and develop. Step by step. Stage by stage. Infant, toddler, toddler, preschool, preschool, school age, school age, teen, teen, adult, like you can see it.

So it’s infinite and unpredictable, and yet on another level it’s totally predictable. Like it’s like it’s our programming to prepare for life on this planet. Just like on the human brain is programmed at a certain stage to learn language, any language. I’m speaking English now, but there’s certain part of the brain, all of us, back when there was a, you know, when we were we ones, and there’s a dog in English, it’s a dog, there’s a ball in English, it’s ball, you know, we’re learning.

There’s mom, there’s dad, but it’s not because English is. You know, we’re ready for English, we are ready for language. And so we’re our brain. Things come online and we’re ready for it. And we could be learn. If we were Japan, we’d learn Japanese, China, Chinese, you know, you get the idea. So it’s like there is this universality of the flexibility, like the flexibility of learning any language.

And so that’s the beauty also of play and its uniqueness. The brain absorbs and builds itself. It builds the person according to the environment that it’s in and according to its stimuli, hopefully, according to the love that it’s surrounded in. And so all these predictable stages had a funny experience some years ago when my older son was younger.

So I had kids later in life and I’d been already decades you know, knee deep in natural playscape design and loose parts and adventure playgrounds way before they were born. I. And I’ve visited early childhood settings, you know, all over the place. And so, you know, I’ve been submerged in it. But then it was interesting to have my, you know, my sons and my first son.

You know, once suddenly I watched him go through these stages that I’d seen when I’d visited. I. Preschools and childcare centers, and suddenly he was in these stages and there was a fire and ice festival here in Ithaca at the Ithaca Children’s Garden, and we had squirt bottles with food coloring so he could squirt snow and stuff.

And sure enough, here he is, four years old and he couldn’t help himself. Right. Like any 4-year-old, suddenly he was attracted to that. Like, what does water squirting color in snow? You know, just like, boom. And I, I just remember just like stepping back and being like, oh my gosh. Yeah. So it’s limitless and yet it’s, there’s a program for it.

There’s certain times that like, just like the language, there’s certain times that boom, you wanna squirt food coloring and snow. So that it’s our job to kind of recognize that and support it, feed it. So again, we think about that kind of difference between this natural development, kind of this rising awakening, weakening of the individual, the building, the growing that through natural programming versus that academics.

Which is kind of pushing information. It’s kinda like manmade programming and hey, you do it at the right time. Could be perfect. Right? Like handing a baton, you know, between development and academics. It’s like, that’s right. Perfect time. To learn, to read the perfect time, to start to go out of the dreamy, imaginative world, into the, you know, learning abstract symbols from the adult world that represent things, you know, on the written page.

You know, it’s a, it can be a perfect time for it but not too soon, right? Not too soon, and not too much. Right. The balance has gotten tipped too much here in the United States. Common core and all that kind of stuff. It’s like it got tipped too much, you know? Great. When it’s time for academics, great. Do academics, but I wanna balance it right, balance it some free time, some downtime, some playtime.

Elementary school ages need it too. And even in academics, we need a playful component, right? Fun, the sense of wonder, the love of learning. If it’s push, push, push, can’t love it so much, but the world’s amazing. There’s so much to learn and wonder about. But what if it was fun? So I think it’s knowing your age group and knowing what’s appropriate when, right?

Because we don’t wanna rush the natural system, right? That is play the system, brain, the body, it’s all programmed to come online bit by bit. So let’s trust it, right? You know, we wanna celebrate it, we wanna understand, we wanna make room for it. And that’s, so that’s kinda like our adult role thinking about that and that programming, like, I like that idea of programming ourselves, letting children program themselves versus being programmed.

So it’s that environment that makes us who we are and we’re part of the children’s environment. So we wanna make space for the the non-planned play, right? The non manmade, the non manmade spaces and kinda the academics like right. You think about manmade adult made scheduled activities or over academic ized, things that are too sanitary, too clean, too screeny, all the screens, that’s all manmade. But if we think of the natural side of things, like play a rises out of the child versus screens beaming at the child and the academics force, adult led things versus. The adult led, the adult led spirit of play and discovery.

I think that play soothes the soul, play meets the soul, and play is our soul. The state of being in that versus the clean screens of the adult world, play itself can be raw. Organic, unplanned, spontaneous, messy, not serious, and yet totally serious. Play is alive. It’s flexible, changing, play makes and play breaks.

And basically my point is that we can honor play and that we adults can feed, play. The environments that we create and the stuff we put in those environments and the loose support that we give children in those environments, and then us advocating for play.

Yeah. So our job really is holding space for play and keeping the hounds of life at bay away. Right. We gotta protect it like a play worker. That’s our work. We gotta create that space and hold that space. Hold the line. This idea, it’s, it’s not play the outside world’s mind. It’s the pattern flow of childhood expressed in infinite ways and possibilities.

Alright, there’s me rapping about play. Wrap it up, rusty. And so the mantra really is time, space, and materials. We wanna provide children with time, space, and materials for play. And here we go. You know, we’re, I’ll wrap it up. I’ll wrap it up. We’ll get to those answers to those questions. What are tree cookies?

But you know, hey, the podcast. We’ll do future episodes. So much to explore with play. We will dig through real science future episodes. I’ll talk to real experts, not not just theorists like me. We’ll find the anthropology of play. We’ll look at perspectives of play from other countries. I’ll dive into that play work, profession, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And I’ll do some more theorizing too about, yeah, because really, I mean, when you really look at play, I mean, and all this kind of, these ideas kind of come from me, like spending time watching play and visiting centers and schools to help come up with ideas for the outdoor environment. I spend a lot of time watching the patterns of play.

And you know, this stuff kind of becomes obvious like, oh, it is spontaneous. And, and if I’ve been doing it, I’ve been doing it for decades and so 30 years ago when I was trying to, watching children play and that spark happened and them pour water and watch what happens or dig in the sand, well it keeps happening.

Like really childhood hasn’t changed. The spark of the universe. Within the programming of our DNA that hasn’t changed. So let’s keep meeting that and let’s keep feeding it. And I have some homework for you. Yes, yes I do. If you are a parent and around your children, or if you’re an educator around children, what you observe the play and this time around, think of it as the universe I.

Speaking perfectly through the spirit of the child, perfect harmony, perfect creation, and you can just be amazed and feed it. Feed that play, feed that spark of the universe. It’s hungry. It’s hungry for more, so keep it going. Hm. Yeah. All right, so now’s the time for q and a. Okay. Here is the first question.

Any suggestions for a good place to cheaply source a slide to create a hill slide area. Okay. We all love the hill slide. If you don’t know what a hill slide is, like an embankment slide, kinda a slide that’s built into a hill, it’s kind of nice because you know, you can be on the slide and if, if you fall outta the slide, you’re just falling on the hill.

But it’s also nice. Hills in general are great. And I’ve done hill slides, you know, my whole natural play-based career, but I’m kind of getting to the place where I kind of like just doing the hills. That’s the hill slide. But anyway, the hill slide itself, the slide itself. Now on my website I sell hill slides, but I sell the big beefy ones.

So it kind of depends on your circumstance. Like do you need a commercial grade, big, beefy one that’s gonna last for a long, long time. Okay. They didn’t go to my website, but. You can also get things for free or cheap. And so it, if you’re thinking about your own backyard for your children or a preschool, it kind of depends on how much traffic you’re going to get.

Could you get away with doing instead of a big beefy commercial grade? Could you do like a backyard grade? So a lot of times places will sell the big beefy commercial grade ones, but they’ll also have the backyard ones. And so they’re a little bit thinner. And they’re not made for like, you know, tons and tons of kids, but they’ll be fine for Hill slide.

And especially if they’re kind of a, like tucked really in the dirt. You got the, you got the earth helping to support them so they could come. From, you know, you can even buy those, you know, hardware big, the big box hardware stores sell backyard play equipment, and then backyard fixtures. So you can often just buy a fairly inexpensive, you know, slide that would go on, little back, backyard swing set kind of thing.

So then you can just pull that, use it in your, use it in your own backyard or your own hill. And I typically will build a little deck on top. On top of the hill and bolt it, bolt the slide to the top of that little deck so children can sit down and then slide. And then usually have a, a metal footing at the base that can go in concrete.

But also for free, you could just start, you know, asking around for, you know, and looking around for places, you know, people that. Yeah, the teenagers are probably not using that little backyard play structure anymore. And maybe people are getting rid of things getting rid of their little swing sets in the backyard and getting rid of things.

And so you could, you could take those on, you could put an ad out, you could kind of put the word out, you’re looking for one. And those are fine. I would totally use those. I have used those kind of the more lighter you know, lighter trafficked playgrounds or backyards, so you could totally just like.

Salvage one of those things and, and use it for your little hill. Fine. And even if you had lots of, you know, traffic and tons of kids and you feel like, well, maybe I need a commercial. You could experiment with the backyard, you know, level size and see how it goes. Okay. Tree cookies, what are those? Okay. I think in the last episode I was talking a lot about natural play scapes.

And different features and things. So, you know, we can get trees often. We can get chunks of trees. If somebody’s, you know, has a tree that falls down their yard, a tree service place comes and cuts it up, gets rid of it. Or city Forester, they’re taking down trees out of the downtowns. So, you know, we can get stumps to sit on logs to balance on, make retaining walls of for sand pits and things like that.

So those are big pieces of wood. But if you took a big branch and you chopped it into like one, two inch thick pieces, those are tree cookies. And so they are like outdoor blocks, building blocks. Yeah, so imagine like a, I don’t know, a 20 foot long branch that’s like, I don’t know, as big as your leg. And so, so this branch wood, you just saw it up into little pieces and you can have two inch pieces, four inch pieces, three inch pieces, whatever, kind of cut it all up like, like slice and bread.

And then you have all these pieces and parts. And you can leave those out and, you know, different woods are better than others. Almost any wood will work. I guess I should say. Different woods will last longer than others. So hardwoods might last longer than soft woods like pine. And then there’s even like natural rot resistant woods, like black locusts that will, could last for a decade or more outside in all the elements.

But you know, with, with the tree cookies. It almost doesn’t matter. You just cut up a whole bunch of these things. Depending on the wood, most times it’s not splintery on the edges, but if it is, you could have, you know, so there’s somebody sawing. You could have someone else with a power sander just sand, those little edges down and you, you don’t really need to treat ’em, you don’t really need to do anything.

I’d say chop ’em up and just throw ’em out there in a corner and say yes to play, yes to children. Building with them. And see what happens. And if they break down and they turn to mulch, they turn to wood chips, you just get more. ’cause you realize how easy it is and how awesome it is once they’re out there and the things that children can do.

So it’s like a natural, could be free, loose part for children’s play that spark the universe. So, all right, there it was episode four. What is play, and I’d love to hear your theories and any questions you have or comments, send them to me at playnaturepodcast@gmail.com. All right, have fun supporting the light of the universe through play.

See you next time.