A compelling history, a manifesto, and a manual for change.

Join Louie, a crafty Llama with Dwarfism, who loves to build, construct and create. Together, he and his friends dream up a plan to bring the very first all-inclusive playground to their town.

Describes the history and purpose of outdoor play areas. Both a reminiscence and a practical manual, this study probes the philosophy of play, the stages of a child's behaviour and social interaction in recreation, and the educational value of playgrounds.

Before today's safety-minded structures of wood and plastic, America's playgrounds were full of tottering seesaws, dizzying merry-go-rounds, and towering metal slides. Documenting the evolution of American playgrounds between 1920 and 1975, Once Upon a Playground is a visual tribute to these iconic structures, celebrating their place in our culture and the collective memories of generations. In it, contemporary photos of vintage pieces of playground equipment are juxtaposed with images of the very same pieces as they were shown in classic catalogs, postcards, and photographs. The result is a haunting time capsule showing a rapidly vanishing part of our country's cultural heritage. Whatever the playgrounds of your childhood looked like, the gorgeous photographs in this book will transport you back in time and remind you of just how important play can really be.

This book focuses on key issues and current research evidence of links between children's behavior in outdoor play environments and children's development. Specific attention is given to ways that outdoor play environments are extensions of other development settings, like the classroom or family. Since most work up to this point has focused on development in indoor classroom settings or in other developmental contexts, this book makes an important contribution.

In New York’s Central Park, some of the playgrounds constructed as part of the midcentury experimental “playground revolution” still remain. In Central Park's Adventure-Style Playgrounds, Marie Warsh tells the engrossing history of these playscapes built in the 1960s and 1970s, exploring their connections to the art, recreational design, urbanism, grassroots movements, and child-development theories of the period. She further details the Central Park Conservancy’s efforts decades later to preserve and renew these playgrounds. So-called adventure-style playgrounds featured interconnected forms including pyramids, mounds, and steps, and basic materials such as water and sand, encouraging new levels of creativity and interaction. By the end of the 1970s, ten of Central Park’s twenty-two existing playgrounds—formerly paved, sterile, standard-equipment-filled lots dating to the 1930s—had been transformed according to the new design ideals. With time, deterioration prompted concerns about safety, and much of the equipment was removed. However, community interest led the Central Park Conservancy to update and preserve the playgrounds that remained in the park. Building on successful aspects of the playgrounds, designers incorporated new technologies, materials, and equipment that reflect contemporary ideas about children’s play and approaches to urban park management. They also developed strategies to better integrate them into the landscapes of the park. Today, Central Park’s adventure-style playgrounds represent significant works of renewed modern landscape architecture as well as models for new thinking about playground design.

Poor design and wasted funding characterize today's American playgrounds. A range of factors--including a litigious culture, overzealous safety guidelines, and an ethos of risk aversion--have created uniform and unimaginative playgrounds. These spaces fail to nurture the development of children or promote playgrounds as an active component in enlivening community space. Solomon's book demonstrates how to alter the status quo by allying data with design. Recent information from the behavioral sciences indicates that kids need to take risks; experience failure but also have a chance to succeed and master difficult tasks; learn to plan and solve problems; exercise self-control; and develop friendships. Solomon illustrates how architects and landscape architects (most of whom work in Europe and Japan) have already addressed these needs with strong, successful playground designs. These innovative spaces, many of which are more multifunctional and cost effective than traditional playgrounds, are both sustainable and welcoming. Having become vibrant hubs within their neighborhoods, these play sites are models for anyone designing or commissioning an urban area for children and their families. The Science of Play, a clarion call to use playground design to deepen the American commitment to public space, will interest architects, landscape architects, urban policy makers, city managers, local politicians, and parents.

Sacred Playgrounds explores the wisdom of camping ministry for Christian education and faith formation, examining its rich history and fundamental characteristics with compelling stories, groundbreaking research, and theological grounding. Christian summer camp is an integral part of the ecology of faith formation in North America, though it has received surprisingly little attention in the scholarly community until now. Camping ministry is often dismissed as simple fun and games or a brief spiritual high that does not last. However, camp experiences often serve as deeply relational and immersive faith experiences that have lasting impacts on participants. Five fundamental characteristics combine dynamically in the effective camp experience: participatory, faith-centered, safe space, relational, and unplugged from home. Together, they open the space for participants to consider new understandings of God, to have time for deep self-reflection, and to build intentional Christian community. These camp experiences are essential components in a larger ecology of faith formation, including the home and congregation. The insight and evidence presented in this book demonstrate that the contributions of camping ministry must be taken seriously among scholars, Christian educators, and ministry professionals.

In his final work, a visionary game designer reveals how a surprising range of play-based experiences can unlock our imagination and help us capture the power of fun and delight. Bernard De Koven (1941–2018) was a pioneering designer of games and theorist of fun. He studied games long before the field of game studies existed. For De Koven, games could not be reduced to artifacts and rules; they were about a sense of transcendent fun. This book, his last, is about the imagination: the imagination as a playground, a possibility space, and a gateway to wonder. The Infinite Playground extends a play-centered invitation to experience the power and delight unlocked by imagination. It offers a curriculum for playful learning. De Koven guides the readers through a series of observations and techniques, interspersed with games. He begins with the fundamentals of play, and proceeds through the private imagination, the shared imagination, and imagining the world—observing, “the things we imagine can become the world.” Along the way, he reminisces about playing ping-pong with basketball great Bill Russell; begins the instructions for a game called Reception Line with “Mill around”; and introduces blathering games—Blather, Group Blather, Singing Blather, and The Blather Chorale—that allow the player's consciousness to meander freely. Delivered during the last months of his life, The Infinite Playground has been painstakingly cowritten with Holly Gramazio, who worked together with coeditors Celia Pearce and Eric Zimmerman to complete the project as Bernie De Koven's illness made it impossible for him to continue writing. Other prominent game scholars and designers influenced by De Koven, including Katie Salen Tekinbaş, Jesper Juul, Frank Lantz, and members of Bernie's own family, contribute short interstitial essays.

Over 170 fun, safe, and ready-to-use activities to help create meaningful play experiences for children.