Rusty Keeler: We know that these teachable moments, you know, we feel like we have to be the teachable moments, but what if we, we just provide those conditions, we provide those materials, and then as we step back, we know that we let the universe teach.
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. Hello. Welcome back to the Play Nature Podcast. I’m gonna just jump right into it here. I’m gonna share today with you, I don’t even know how to describe this. It’s an aha moment. Like one of these that has to do with play an aha moment that is like changed, changed everything for me, and it’s something that I have a feeling I’m gonna have.
I’m gonna be unpacking maybe for the rest of my life. As I think about play, you know, we’re, we’re people who think about play a lot. And this is kind of under the heading of the nature of play. So I had this flash this fall and yeah, I just saw things in a new way. And, uh, today’s podcast is going to be me trying to explain it, trying to put it into words, this flash, and to see then what it means for us.
Who love, play and support play and, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, and, and how do we can continue our practice basically of loving play and supporting play. But let me get there. Okay, so that’s, that’s, that’s what we’re gonna get to here and just kind of the background here I am. At the, at the creek, again, a solo episode, and now it’s winter in Ithaca again.
And it’s been frigid, which is great. Um, and we’ve had lots of ice, lots of good ice. Um, I’ve been freezing water in water balloons and all sorts of plastic bins and buckets and things, so having lots of fun making sculpture and stuff. Are you doing that too? And then here at the creek? The creek is having fun, freezing water also, so there’s lots of good ice on the on the edges and it hasn’t formed all the way across, but it’s gonna get down to single digits for like the next week here.
So we’ll have probably have some even grander ice, but right now there’s some nice ice. And we may even hear crunching as I was sitting here getting ready. I heard some crunching going on every now and then with the ice. So. Listen for that. Oh, there, I just heard one. Uh, okay, so here it is. It’s January, 2026, and I must admit that I’ve been feeling a little down.
I’ve been feeling a little sad. Ah, world events, domestic events. Leadership, and I think for me it was kind of like this Greenland, seeing people in Greenland. Hm. Concerned and scared and like these like native folks, they look like native folks from Northern Canada and Northern Alaska. And suddenly there have all these concerns and it kind of made me sad.
Ah, but you know, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been trying to stay positive and try not to get knocked off. My foundation and my, what I believe in, and, and part of that is like, you know, there’s a lot of things that we can’t do in the world that we don’t have effect on. We, you know, have no control on over, but we have control over ourselves and our community and the people we work with, the children we work with, our own children, and that we still have the light within us and we can shine that out.
We can be a loving presence in the world. And that makes a difference. That does make a difference. And so we think about what brings us joy and you know, how can we be ambassadors of love and compassion? And I’m sure you’re doing it with your work with children or your own children. And I guess that’s, that is, that’s our domain, our sphere of influence.
So I’m glad you’re with me now as we, you know, we’re making our way in the world and I’m glad we’re together and we gotta stick together, right? We believers in play and believers in the light, the light of the world. And so, you know, this is our community right now. It’s our, our podcast community. And it’s nice to know I’m not alone.
And I hope it’s nice for you to know that you are not alone too. Whoa, hear that Ice cracking. I’m not on the ice. Don’t worry. I’m next to it. Yeah. So it’s good to know that we’re in community and I want to, I wanna build that up, especially this year, I think. I think we need that. So I’ll talk more about that later.
But that’s it. It’s like play. Believers in play. We are believers in play. We’re believers in childhood. We’re believers in being outdoors. You are a believer in children being outdoors, and you believe that it’s important to have freedom. Children have freedom and nature mess, mud kitchens, you know, time, space, materials, loose parts, the real stuff.
And if you’re like me, you’re, you’re a believer so much that play for play’s sake is good enough. That’s what I always say. Play, you know, I, you don’t have to try to prove it to me anymore. I’m a believer. I, you know, it’s nice that there’s research. Happening now. I mean, I feel like in the last decade especially, there’s been so much research that is pointing to the importance of play and free play and loose parts and risky play and connections to nature in children’s lives for their growth and development, physically, socially, emotionally, intellectually.
So the research is there. And we also know that play checks all the boxes, right? In the adult world, the adult mind, it checks all the boxes. You know, play can be math, it could be science, it could stem, pre-literacy, you know, social, emotional, all that stuff. That’s, that’s one of the beautiful things about play.
It can check all those boxes. It can, it can fit into any of those, you know, priorities that. Adults have and adult systems or learning systems have, and that’s great. But whether it’s those boxes, labeling play as math and science, or the research that is looking at, you know, brain development or looking at, you know, social de emotional development, all that stuff is great.
I’m glad it’s happening and I’m glad that we can put words to it. But really. All those things are limited. All those ideas are limited ideas when it comes to the broad, expansive reality that play actually is, and the role that play plays in children’s lives and development. You know, that’s kinda like the adult’s view of the child’s world.
Of what’s happening with play, but it’s all, those are all labels. You know, in our understanding and the labels, our understanding is it is getting bigger and bigger every day, which is good, but it is still limited because friend, we know that what’s actually happening with children’s play is so much deeper.
It’s more comprehensive than we could ever know. What’s happening in their bodies, in their minds, in their hearts, in their spirits is so comprehensive. It’s more than we would ever know that we can ever know. We can put the labels on and then we can then lobby for play. But what’s happening deeper beneath the surface is so much more.
In fact. I say it’s cosmic. We know it’s systematic, it’s systems, the child’s physiological systems, and we know that children are programmed for play, right? As as children are growing from one stage to another, it’s like all their systems are coming online. And I don’t mean online on the internet, on the worldwide web.
I mean, they’re coming online for their lives. The systems, their systems, and it’s automatic. I mean, that’s the thing that’s interesting too, like the adult role with play and childhood and development is that really, this stuff is automatic, kind of like a flower growing out of the ground. Right. There are systems in place.
There are natural processes happening, roots going down, and uh, seedlings coming up and leaves and flowers and stems, and then all the pieces and parts like it is a system. And to support a flower, we create the conditions for healthy growth, water, sunlight, that kinda stuff. Love singing to your flower.
Right? And the same goes for play. You know, it is automatic. Children are programmed to play, and our job can be setting up the conditions. You know, it, it’s so automatic, we can’t push it. We can’t push play, we can’t push development. Just like we can’t push a flower to grow faster beyond its system, what it’s programmed to do.
And really we shouldn’t be doing that to children either. There is a season turn, turn, turn, right, right. There’s a season for each step and stage along the way, but we can set up those conditions, right? So if that’s our job is to give permission to play maybe. Prioritize play and we think a lot about process over product, but maybe play over process.
Maybe it’s not even process, maybe it’s just play a priority is play. And as we think about, you know, having that be our priority. What we’re prioritizing is really like the programming, the system of the universe, right? Like this is just, it’s the way it happens. It’s the way that children grow in development and they do it through play.
Or if you don’t wanna use the word play, they do it through being, just being, being alive, being curious, being drawn to experiences and activities and materials. So what if we trusted that? What if we, what if we just trusted that kind of programming of the universe? What then would be our role? Okay.
Getting to my big aha moment, right? Like what is, what is this big aha moment? No, I’ve been thinking about play for many, many years. I started designing playground equipment in 1991. Woo. Maybe you weren’t even born then, or maybe you were somebody that was a kid then and I was designing for you, or maybe you’re older, way older than me, and you’ve been doing this for far longer, which is totally awesome.
Anyway, we, we come at this at all different stages and steps along the journey. I’m glad we’re in this journey together. But anyway, I’ve been thinking about all this for a long time, so it is really fun to have these little moments of aha and I get ’em all the time because what I don’t, I don’t know anything, right?
I’m learning all the time. I’m learning just like you. And, and that’s fun and that’s awesome. And I hope I, I never stop learning. So my aha moment has to do a bit with Schema. Yes, schema. And maybe, you know, if you listen to this podcast last year you heard the episode about Schema with Heather Burn Santy.
The Crate, Heather, bird San, that childhood nerd. I’m not calling her that, that she calls herself that, right. That’s her podcast. So anyway, that was a great episode. It was, it was. You’ll hear my mind getting blown, speaking of learning and all the time and having lots of aha moments on that. And we had a lot of fun.
You know, she’s a total riot. And so for me, that was good. You know, I, I, I was learning so much about schema and, you know, she talks about it as like that schema theory helps make sense of all the peculiar behaviors, all the weird behaviors that children have. I’m not calling them weird myself, but, you know, uh, like.
Stacking up, you know, lining up Hot Wheels cars, lining them up, lining them up, lining them up. Perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect. Pouring water. Pouring water, pouring water, pouring water, climbing in shelves, bookshelves. Clearing off, clearing off the books or toys and climbing in these tight little spaces.
And you know, we know that that’s what children do. That’s what kids do. They do all that stuff and, and then as a designer or supporter of play, it’s kind of fun to provide all those opportunities, to do all those kinds of things, you know? And so in, in another way, for us as adults, you know, as we’re, we’re also play advocates, we’re, we’re play supporters, but we’re also always advocating for play or checking those boxes for other people, parents, licensers.
Fellow staff members, administrators of like, okay, no, no, it’s, it’s actually important that little Jimmy is cleared off the books and is in the bookcase. No, that’s perfectly natural. That’s perfectly natural. Them pouring water for an hour straight. No, no, that’s, it’s important. And then of course we say things like science and.
You know, engineering or all that kinda stuff. Math. There’s math going on, there’s volume, there’s hydrology, and that’s good. We have those words, but here’s this aha moment. Let’s see if I can see if I can describe this to you. Okay, so it actually happened. So I had the podcast with Heather, go back and listen to it.
And then we had the I-P-A-U-S-A conference. It’s the International Play Association, the US chapter, and we had a play conference in Louisville and it was so great and I hope you come to the next I-P-A-U-S-A conference. Stay tuned to where it’s going to be held, uh, because they’re great. It’s a chance for all of us, play people to get together and learn and grow, and then play also and have fun.
So. Being a fan of Heather’s, I went to Heather’s session and she’s talking about, you know, this stuff and, uh, schema. And also I am not gonna go into what, talk to her, listen to her about what her session was, but she showed a picture of a child. Pouring sand. It was like pouring sand in sitting on the ground.
It was like a little sand, very small little sand table, sand bin. And they were just pouring sand through their fingers, through their fingers. And in the background, far in the background, there was like an adult. And then the rest is my imagination. But in this one moment, I saw the sand through the fingers, and you can imagine what that looks like and feels like.
And it’s like sand by sand, almost like molecules. Almost like atoms. Pouring through. Pouring through, and the child staring down, feeling it, sifting through their fingers, through their fingers, and all of a sudden blam. I saw in my mind that the motion. Of the sand and the particles of the sand pouring in their patterns together, and then that in, in the child’s hand up, through the arm, through their eyes, into their brain, their heart, their spirit, the same sort of, suddenly the learning happening at this particular level of particles of like.
The, the neurons, the pathways, like the sand pouring is this natural phenomena, a physical phenomena and. And so is the actual learning, the things that are happening in the child, from the fingers up the forearm, elbows to the shoulder, into the body, through the eyes, through the mind, all the senses. And then what’s happening in the brain is again, this patterning of growth, of connections, of pathways, and that’s all happened like that is a system and the adult in the background who’s grown up.
If through past 25 their prefrontal cortex has been developed fully and they’re in the adult world, but suddenly down here into this schema, into the sand table, into the child, into the doing this repetitive patterning, thinking and experiencing that is happening. That is a system, and to me. What was happening with that sand and what was happening into the mind and the spirit of that child.
Those things were more alike, those patterns, that system, that motion was more like the sand in the child than the adult in the background. Like the child and that sand, that schema that was happening, like on this other level, this other dimension, and the adult back there could be looking wellbeing, the adult, the teacher, the parent could be trying to communicate with that child.
And yet it was two different worlds. You know? To me it was like that child locked in to that sensory experience. Full on compared to the adult in the background. If the adult was speaking, it would sound like, do you remember what Charlie Brown’s teacher sounded like? Wha.
And that’s at that, well, the adult could be like, Hey Barbara, what’s that sand feel like? Or. Wow, are you really pouring that, you know, engaging the child and feeling like they wanna have a teaching moment and be a part of it? But it was this idea that play, again, again, like play, being, experiencing, exploring materials and this world and the senses that is like suddenly locked in, like children are locked in to that world and wonderfully they can be locked into us, our world too.
And with hugs and hearts and laughs and cries and communication and all that, but just that idea that, that to me now, I don’t know. That was my ahaha moment and I don’t know, maybe that doesn’t mean anything to anybody else, but it meant something to me and, and to me it was like this idea, like that play is, it’s, it’s mystical.
And it’s like, it’s, it’s physical, but it’s even metaphysical, right? It’s like multidimensional, like it is happening and we are on the outside of it. We’re supporting it. We’re loving it, we’re watching it happen. If you talk like Heather about the peculiar, you know, and the schema answering why kids are doing peculiar things, but it’s like this primal thing.
It’s happening. Also on the microscopic level. Subatomic level, but there’s patterning. You know, if we think about the patterns of the universe, the pattern of life on earth, the patterning of veins, and a leaf of a tree, that. Also resemble veins in us or the way our lungs look, or the way our brains work, or the way that neurons are connected and the pathways between them.
Like there are patterns and I feel like the play on that level, the level that is like, I can’t even explain it. This is the best I’m doing it, explaining it that it is beyond our comprehension, like it is putting down pathways that we don’t know about. I don’t think research has done this kind of thing, and how could you even do research on this kind of thing, but that it’s laying down these patterns, the sand, the child, the arm, the, the mind, the brain, the heart, and, and it’s laying on the foundation of what it’s like to live on this planet.
Those patterns are helping the child that being learn about physically the conditions of this planet. Pouring water, pouring sand. It’s laying down the foundations of being alive. Buckminster Fuller, some great futurist, architect, inventor, he said playgrounds should be renamed research laboratories. He said, children aren’t playing.
They’re finding out how the universe works, and yes, they are. And, and we can say they are playing and that’s how children learn about the universe and how it works. And in one sense, they are, they are learning, they are active learners, right? Kind of out here in the physical world, in the physical realm.
They’re active learners, conscious, conscious of what they’re learning, but also that learning, there’s deeper things going on within their system that is unconscious. It’s beneath their awareness. It’s that systematic molecular and cosmic, I say it’s cosmic. So it’s happening. And again, the adult, you know, so what is our adult rule?
What do we do? How do we support that? You know, well-meaning, you know, you know, if we’re asking the questions, uh, but what do we do when the meaning. Might not have words or that children don’t know. What does the sand feel like? I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s what I’m, that’s what I’m discovering, what the sand feels like, and so I’m saying it’s okay.
To sometimes not engage like that. When we’re supporting play, we, we don’t have to feel like we’re always engaging, we’re always having language literacy, pre-literacy stuff going on that it’s okay to leave it because we know that these teachable moments, you know, we feel like we have to be the teachable moments, but what if we, we just provide those conditions?
We provide those materials, and then as we step back, we know that we let the universe teach. The teachable moments can be from the universe. We let the elements teach. We let the materials, the textures, the sensations. We let the feeling of it teach. Right. I mean, from one adult to another, I know that I’m limited.
I’m well-meaning, but I’m limited. I don’t know everything that’s going on, and especially when it comes to these systematic development, you know, so it’s really. So much of play we know is trust. You know, we talk about risky play and trusting the child and knowing that they’re capable and trusting them to make decisions, and we are there to support them.
Taking deep breaths, but so much is like the adult trusting this process, trusting this process. Trusting the programming of the universe, huh? Right. What if we did that? When we are stepping back and watching play with amazement, we’re like, wow, I am amazed and I am trusting the programming of the universe to, to this built in thing to grow this child.
And I, I am no schemas. So I can put out the right materials and I know play and I love outdoors and I want children to be in nature because that is connecting them to the natural world, which also has its systems and processes and ways of being and growing. So I think that’s it. Like systems are in place.
So what if our role really is just to create those conditions for it to love it? To marvel at it, to wonder about it. I think always supporting social emotional stuff. You know, helping, helping kids kind of navigate, you know, the other, the other children and other adults. That’s really important. Us doing risk benefit analysis, us removing hazards, making things safe as necessary, and being a loving presence.
Coming back to that with our children, with the world. But I think what if we, what if we went with that and felt it, and we’re confident in that, that things are happening. Even not, we’re not actively engaging. We’re trying to teach from the outside.
We know that we can trust that things are happening, growth and development, that we can, we can secretly know that a universe of things is happening. So if we can do that, if we can know that there is a secret universe on all these different levels in within the child, connected to the nature, connected to the elements that that’s happening, then we can, we can.
Feel confident, rest assured, and we can be amazed. And then here, then this might be the the biggest role of all. We must then become the play ambassadors. We must be the play advocates. We must be the ones out in the adult world that speak the adult language to protect that space for children, to protect those spaces, to protect those activities.
So that’s us translating, you know, and believing in the play. And maybe, maybe you’re like me, like there are a million, billion things going on and I don’t even want to get into it. I just wanna support it to happen. But then we have to translate that for others. Or I could say we get to, we get to translate it.
We get to support something we love by translating it to the other adults who care about. You know, children getting ready to read or getting ready for school or getting their homework done, or, uh, you know, being safe or wanting to learn math or wanting to learn why, why is play important? Well, we can talk the talk, right?
We can summarize the benefits, we can categorize the activities, we can check the boxes, we can promote the learning. But we can also know that things are happening deeper than that. And so I will just want to reassure you when you support, play and however you do it, you are doing the right thing. Ah. And I know sometimes it can be lonely.
If you’re supporting play and others have other, you feel like they have other priorities, parents, administrators, teachers, licensing and that kind of stuff, that can feel lonely. But I will say, you are doing the right thing by supporting play. And you are not alone. You are not alone. We are in this together.
We’re doing it together. We are believers in play. And I want us to stay connected. I’m wrapping it up here, but I wanna wrap it up with the idea like, we are together and I need you. Yes. I need to feel like I’m part of, part of this movement of supporting play and believing in play, and I want to grow with you and learn with you and share with you.
Ideas and aha moments and bring in through this podcast other people that can give us aha moments and share their belief and support and play and nature and the nature of play and all that stuff, and growing together as a community. This year I’m cooking up something. I am, I’m in a form a community, and I would love for you to be a part of it.
So I’ll be talking more about this and I’ll let you know, but because I feel it’s important, important for play in this day and age with play important as we grow, no matter where we’re at, supporting play and believing in play, or feeling confident if we’re just beginning, if you’re. You’re doing it, but you still have questions.
Or if you’re going full power, best practice and you still love learning every minute, every stage, and also it’s good and important to form community in this wobbly time of ours internationally, domestically, all that. If we can know that we are connected. Our hearts are connected. Our belief in play is connected.
Our connections to nature are connected. We can all love trees and we are connected. We can all love water. We can all love ice. We are connected. We love play. We are connected. So, all right there. It was my aha. Did it make any sense? Did that ring any bells? Are you with me? Hey, email me. Let me know. All right.
Till next time. Thanks for listening.
Alright, thanks for listening. Do you have a comment or a question? Email me. At Play Nature podcast@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.
