Everything is free At our play days, I can tell you over and over people say, pat, you could bring in a lot of money if you charged. And I said, ah. But then. There’s some people that couldn’t attend our play date, and we don’t want that. We believe everybody deserves to play.
Hi, this is Rusty Keeler and you’re listening to the Play Nature Podcast, where we talk about play nature, playing in nature, and the nature of play. I’m glad you’re here. Let’s have a listen. Alright, here we go. I’m excited to be with you again. And I’m back at the Creek Six Mile Creek in Ithaca, New York, and this is one of those places that I visit over and over again.
And as we think about seasonal changes. It’s fun to revisit places all year long and see the subtle differences or the not so subtle differences of our favorite places. So here I am. It’s still summer. It’s still technically summer, but we’re leaning towards autumn. And so the creek here, just to give you a little catch, the vibe a bit is low.
It’s very low. Very calm. So many more rocks are showing, showing themselves. That would’ve been in the creek in the water other times of the year, but we haven’t had tons of rain. So yeah, it’s pretty low. There’s just some gentle meandering and there’s even some gentle meandering ducks. Just kind of making their way like four or five ducks just kind of making their way upstream, poking around, nibbling on this and that.
Another change for autumn, for me. Hey, fever. Yeah. You may detect a subtle or not so subtle congestion. Don’t worry. No cold, but definitely allergies. Every couple years something kicks in, so it’s got me this year, but. It’s not gonna stop me from going outside and enjoying enjoying the world. So here we are among rocks and leaves, gentle breeze, ducks, water flow, and.
Yeah, so I’m excited to talk about Autumn and some ideas and tips for Nature Play and connecting with the season for you and your children. But then also kind of, I wanna just maybe start with a little, you know, recap of the summer, the summer podcast sessions, because we had a flurry. Of great guests and you know, if you followed along, if you listen to them, you, you know what I’m talking about.
If not, maybe you’ll wanna go back and check some of them out, because they were amazing. So many amazing ideas and thoughts and, and definitely kind of shifted my thinking, expanded my thinking about play and the state of play. These days and our role as adults who believe in play and honor, play and respect, play, and wanna support play in children’s lives.
You know, we started off with my friend Phoebe, who’s a play worker, and you know, she kind of got into the idea of authentically honoring children, you know, almost as peers, you know, as a fellow human. On the journey and how we, you know, children can sense that and know when there’s trusted adults and how as we support, play and take play seriously for the awesomeness that it is, that children catch that vibe.
And then we can, you know, when we’re in, in that way, we can be great supporters. As we were thinking about supporting play, I talked to my friend Cameron. Who’s in Scotland, who is kind of the head of STR early childhood programs, nature programs. So he’s got these wild outdoor nature play, forest school, metal school adventure playgrounds that they have built and evolved.
And what I loved, you know, I had so many things about Cameron’s Place and our talk was, but it was this idea of no, no matter what you have. You could start with your vacant lot. You could start with a flat piece of ground that doesn’t have, you know, any trees or plants. But then you know that dream big.
You just, and you start small and you start adding, you start planting, you start building, you start bringing people into the community, and you start building out what you believe in. Yeah, and you never stop. You keep going, you keep going. You may rip things out and put new things in, or suddenly, you know, after a few years, the whole space has changed and there’s trees, or it’s a forest, or now there’s an orchard, or there’s a fire.
You had some of them, where’s a fire? So then they salvage pieces of some of the structures that they rebuilt in new ways. So always evolving, always moving forward. They talked to the great Deb Curtis in toddler, toddler land, and you know, so many, so much wisdom and fun and advice, but probably the biggest thing was that idea of with toddlers and all children to pause and marvel, pause and marvel and watch them.
Before you step in, before you need to feel like you gotta stop something before you need to direct or improve what’s going on or teach you just pause and marvel at what they’re doing because they are, they’re wired and wound to explore and learn and grow and take it in. As I’m talking here, the ducks have moved right in front of me, so you might hear some splashing.
That’s the ducks. Looks like they’re. They’re going for the little seaweed and stuff in the creek. Cute. And we talked to Dr. Peter Gray. We did two sessions with him, and the first was just about play. Like what is play and the idea of this instinct that children have the instinct to play, which connects them to all their other instincts.
Of physical development and emotional development, intellectual development, and social, and through play, children discover who they are, what they are about, what their path is. Yeah. And so we wanna support that and play, you know, the playful mind and the playful opportunities to explore. Well, then I went to Angela.
Angela Hanscomb, who’s a occupational therapist, who started Timber Nook, and that was kind of a deep dive masterclass in really the importance of play in children’s lives, kind of from the biology of it all, like the physicality of it all, the neurological, you know, utter importance of play, you know, to build the brain.
And to build our sense of children’s, sense of, you know, where they are in space, keeping kids from falling out of their chairs, but they need to be spinning. Do we often doing the things that maybe teachers or recess aids thinks that, oh, I gotta say no to spinning, spinning, spinning on swings. But Angela talks about how actually that kind of behavior, those kind of activities are vital for children’s healthy growth and development.
And then Peter, you know, as we talk about what’s vital for children, Dr. Peter Gray again talked about the mental health crisis of children today and how they’re suffering because of so many different reasons and even the stress of school it how that is affecting children. And he, you know, it was interesting talking to him because, you know, he’s a researcher and he kind of follows along and he’s been following along all these generations of children.
And watching how play evolves, but also how childhood has shifted and you know, where he sees even, you know, the techno technological, you know, place where we are at now, but also how children kind of flow like water to find their connections with other children. You know, it used to be outdoors, used to be in neighborhoods, used to be, you know, in the flesh.
In person, but now they found connection through the phones. And you know, the phones have, there’s a lot of, you know, there’s the good, the bad and the, and the messy with phones. But he sees also the positive things about that and how it’s evolved. And that got me thinking about, okay, you know, childhood. In many ways has changed since I was a child way back when, and you know, we can accept that.
Okay. Children, they don’t go outside as much as they used to. They don’t connect with nature as much as they used to. They find their connections through technology. Okay. You know, we can, we can both accept that, but at the same time, if you’re with me, we can also stand for wanting. To still connect children to nature, still connect children to the outside world, to the outdoors, to their community, to their culture, to the landscapes where they live.
Yeah. Kind of that deep stuff. The earth speed stuff and the seasons. That’s my segue. The segue to the seasons. I’m all about it. You, you too. Right. We want children to get outside and we want them to live it firsthand. Seasonal change. So, you know, you may be going into autumn like I am now. If you are in the Northern hemisphere.
Yeah. We’re, we’re gearing up for it. We’re getting ready for it, or we’re pretending it’s not happening. If we want to hang on to summer, endless summer. You might be in the southern hemisphere, whereas in fact you would be going into spring. That’s good too. And this all applies. It all applies. But even if you were in a place that is going in autumn, but you’re far down south and you don’t think there’s changes, there’s still changes.
There’s still subtle changes. So I have some tips here my my fall tips for you and some ideas for ways that you can connect yourself and your children to. If the seasonal change, and the first one is again that be present. Yeah. Going to nature, finding your place to sit, sit spot where you can just be in nature, be on earth speed.
Taking some time, and this could be just for you. A little me time for you to just plant yourself and take deep breaths and use all your senses to experience one of your places on earth. Speed, rhythm. And you can also bring children there or bring children somewhere else in nature where they could just be and observe.
And also, you know, children as they are observing nature. They’re doing it full on, full body with their hands. They’re looking under rocks. They’re, you know, having fun with it. So it doesn’t have to be just peaceful, meditative, watching and smelling, sniffing. If you don’t have allergies, you know, let ’em get into it.
And that’s how they experience the, the seasons full on and you see what kind of plants are around you and how are they changing. Now if you’re in the northeast like me, you know, we go through dramatic change. But if you’re in Southern California or other places south, you know, maybe you feel like, well, we don’t go through the big, you know, crunch of maple leaves changes, but you know, there’s, there’s more subtle changes.
So if you tune into those, you’ll really connect to the season. But a big part is plants. So you may be lucky in your play space or your backyard to already have plans that go through great changes, you know, that do burst into color or develop fruit, you know, and it’s ripe now here as we approach autumn.
So that’s great. But if you don’t, you know what you could do. You could plant those things. Yeah. Yeah, so maybe you have the seasonal interest this year, but you could also think about how you wanna create it for next year and think about what you wanna plant. Trees. Trees that change into colors or have fruit apples, if you’re in a place that grows apples.
Pears, you know, fall fruit, that’s a great thing to get into the ground, start planting it. Same with shrubs, berry bushes, and fall bulbs. Yeah, so now we can think about spring coming up and now’s the time we plant those bulbs, flower bulbs. And again, you know, I’m all about abundance. So plant a million bulbs, or at least a hundred, or at least a dozen.
Plant as many as you can in all different kinds and stuff, ’em in different areas. And of course that is a fun thing to do with children plant flower bulbs because it’s almost magic. You know, you put ’em in the ground. Now you can forget about ’em for half a year. But lo and behold, when the season shifts again for spring, oh my gosh, it’s like magic.
Suddenly there are these great flowers coming up, celebrating that season. Another thing, you know, some materials that are fun in fall and easier to get your hands on, perhaps straw bales. You know, I love straw bales for their versatility outside. You can use ’em for all sorts of different things. We could drag them around.
You could stack ’em. You could have a bit of circle reading circles. You can make forts, you can make obstacle courses. You can make furniture with it. And the great thing is you use it for a while and then when it’s done or it gets smed, you could just pull ’em apart and use that as mulch. Use that as part of your ground cover.
Soft, squishy crown cover. So it’s a natural, it’s organic, it’s compostable. Speaking of natural materials in your yard, how about leaves? Probably have some trees. Do they drop leaves? I don’t know. For all my friends in Hawaii, it’s, you know, you’ve, you have different trees. You have other things, but if you are in a place where you know autumn leaves happen and you are raking them, why not do some surprises for the children?
You just rake a bunch of piles and you don’t say anything, and then they just come out and they discover them out there. These big piles of leaves. How will they use them? What will they do? And we want children to dive deep in nature. So as we know, what helps that? Mud clothes. Yeah. Maybe you get some mud clothes for yourself and also your children.
Yeah. And so there’s lots of different things you can get. There’s full on, you know, top and bottoms connected mud outfits where you can get just mud pants. On my website, I sell some nicely made but inexpensive mud clothes, top and bottom, that you could just pull over children’s clothes. I work with a seamstress out in the state of Oregon and she sews these, these clothes up and I’ve found a lot of schools, but like for the whole class, let’s, we’ll buy ’em for the whole class ’cause they’re reasonably priced and then easy just to slip on, slip off so that children could get into it, get into the thick of it, and not worry about getting their, their fancy pants money.
And then as we think about play in the days of play, did you know that there was a National Day of play? That’s right. Yes. What a great holiday. That should be a national holiday right there. Yeah. Coming up September 20th is the National Day of Play, and to give you a little more background, I have a quick little interview with Pet Rumba who’s in Tacoma Park, Maryland, outside of Washington DC to tell us how she does play days and to give a pitch for you to do play day also.
Hi Pat. Hello, rusty. How are you? You know, I’m, I’m doing great. It’s a beautiful day. How could you not be doing well? I
know, I know. We soak it up.
Soak it up, but we got it. Yeah. I’m excited to hear from you about your work. Let’s play America and then the Play day, the National Play Days.
Sure I’d, I’d love to share.
So 2009, I founded a play committee and we started doing a variety of things, but the number one thing we were focused on was planning play days, and we do a variety of other things, but I’ll get into that sometime down the road and. Coming up is our 17th annual play day. We do have a midwinter and we do have an adult play day, but we specifically hold it in September because you and I are members of the International Play Association and that’s right.
The I-P-A-U-S-A is under IPA world. There’s a week or so that during that period, I-P-A-U-S-A loves for people to hold a play day and happened to be that the day they wanted September 20th, the main day, that’s when we’re holding our play day. So I’m so glad that fell under their umbrella of time and all over the United States.
There was. Going to be play days. And actually, if you are a member of I-P-A-U-S-A, you can apply for a mini grant, which we have gotten in the past. And we received this year, $250 to help us buy a lot of face painting. And we have a new puppet theater, but our play day primarily, we hope will be a day we can be outside.
A little light rain. We can still be outside some, or long as there’s no lightning. But only once did we totally need to be inside. But we offer around 30 activities, a couple bands performances. Uh, a lot of it’s interactive, but the big key of our play day is choices. And we don’t just focus on children, we focus on intergenerational play.
Yeah. Because we, we love when the grandparents, or. Possibly seniors in the community come out and play board games with younger children, or maybe they make a mud pie together. You would love that Rusty. Yes. We find a lot of natural things to decorate our mud pies from acorns to leaves, to sticks, dandelions, if we can find some, anything like that.
Wild flowers. But we have all kinds of activities too. Help attendees sit back and say, wow. This is something and they either go to something they’ve played before or maybe they’ve never done dress up, or they may say, oh, look at those trucks for touch a truck. And I love seeing adults and kids climb up on those.
We bring in some experts. We have a pickleball experts ’cause we all know that pickleball is growing and that’s. Something you can play, but we have teams that offer that are high level tennis players that will play with attendees, and then people know about those places. But then there’s good old jump rope and hula hoop and hopscotch and playing with sidewalk chalk, just all kinds of fun activities.
Variety, huge variety. Yeah,
and even the most simple things, as we call it, just boxes, and we just put a slew of boxes out and it’s always fun when a volunteer teen or a daughter say, well, well, what do I do with them, pat? I said. Just put ’em out there and wait till you see what happens. That’s right. And, and then the magic of play happens.
And I love that. But the are, have you heard of from School of Rock by any chance? So around the United States, there are School of Rock. Um, places where not only children but adults can learn how to play music well in the town next to us, silver Spring, Maryland has a school of rock house band and it’s comprised of teenagers and, uh, they can’t charge and so they need places to perform.
So they’re coming back to our play date.
Oh, nice.
They’ll kick off Play day, and then they’re in play day. And we also have a community ban, and that’s comprised of adults and they’ve been playing for years. Normally our congressman comes and leads, Simon says. Congress’s been raskin, but he’s been pretty busy.
So our Maryland state delegate may fill in if he can’t make it. So that’s basically it. It’s really fun. I’d love someday if you could come to a play date, rusty, I think you’d. You’d have fun.
Yeah. Well, if people were interested in starting their own play day, you know, you’ve been doing it for so many years and it’s, you know, this incredible, you know, they had the multi-generational and then so many different, you know, people from the community being a part of it.
But if people were gonna just start fresh, they’ve never done it before, what would your advice be? You know, kind of that dream, big start, small, never stop kind of thing. Yeah. But what, yeah, how, how could people start?
I’m so glad you asked because for a small amount, $30, they could go to our website. Let’s play america.org, and they could order our handbooks, which we have Oh, both for in-person.
And for remote or virtual and you know, just like you said, start small and find your friends that love to play and that are passionate about life. Yeah. And then look at your environment. Where would be a good place to hold a play date? Your community? Is there a a place that if you held it outside and weather just wreaked havoc on things, could you have a backup indoor place?
Sure. Sure. Think wedding because of
Oh, right, right, right, right.
That could happen. Lastly, you may wanna have bathroom facilities nearby. Okay.
Okay. So you’re picking a place that people from the community can get to your Yeah. You have facilities, preferably, and then a variety of activities, and that might be, depending on who your helpers are and the ideas that they have and materials.
Yes, yes. There are just so many places you could hold a play day, you know, obviously a playground. That’s where we held our first one because we did have bathroom facilities and we had an indoor play room that held maybe 75 people, but we were lucky. We had nice weather. Yeah, so. Playground and it was primarily outside.
We did a few things inside. I think we had the dress up clothes inside and, and a Lego table or something like that, but out outside. We did all kinds of things. I played at the playground and many activities. Face painting I mentioned earlier, that gets them in the mood music, right. You know, real, see if you can bring a band or a single performer that’s playing a guitar, anything, or play or play music that adds to the atmosphere.
Refreshments is great to have
Uhhuh, Uhhuh
and, and you know, people will donate stores, businesses wanna help you. Our, our co-op, our Starbucks giant food has helped us in the past and other places, sometimes even. We have had high school groups, like a cookie club make us cookies, but we keep it more on the healthy side because we wanna model a playful, healthy community.
Yes. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And everything is free at our play days, I can tell you over and over people say, pat, you could bring in a lot of money if you charged. And I said, ah. But then. There’s some people that couldn’t attend our play date, and we don’t want that. We believe everybody deserves to play.
Yeah.
Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. Alright, well thank you so much. I am excited to hear about how your play day this year goes and other people’s around the country and yeah, I think just the idea of thinking of it as like a little community party, uh, where you’re celebrating play and, you know, making new friends and having a great time and, and building memories too.
Oh, thank you so much for having me rusty.
Sure thing.
All right, bye for now.
And last but not least, if you want even more great play stuff, may I recommend the upcoming National Play Conference, the I-P-A-U-S-A, that’s the International Association for the Child’s right to Play. There’s. There’s branches in all countries. So the USA chapter is having its national conference this October, Louisville, Kentucky.
I’m gonna be there building fairy huts in a great play forest. And yeah, there’s gonna be so many great speakers and fun things to do, and great people to meet, and fun things to explore. And we’re gonna do tours of great programs and great outdoor spaces. We’re going to children’s museums and these researched.
Play forests and all sorts of great stuff. So yeah, I hope you can make it I’ll, in the show notes, we’ll put a link to I-P-A-U-S-A conference page where you can just, you know, Google that. Alright, so there’s some fall tips and if you think there’s somebody that would appreciate these, these ideas and these tips, a friend of yours.
Yeah, why don’t you, would you share this episode? That’d be great. And as always, you can send me an email with questions and yeah, I’d love to hear how you are exploring and experiencing fall with your children and with yourself. Okay. Alright. Till next time.
All right. Thanks for listening. Do you have a comment or a question? Email me at playnaturepodcast@gmail.com. You know, I like talking about this stuff and maybe we could use your question on a future podcast episode. As always, I have some free goodies for you in the show notes. Including my outdoor loose parts guide, fun stuff in there.
And so I wish you the best in your outdoor play adventures. And when it comes to adding nature to your yard or loose parts or saying yes to risky play, my favorite motto is dream big, start small and never stop. Oh yeah. Woo, woo, woo. Let’s do it. All right. Have fun out there.
