‘I climbed right up to here’ or Risk and Challenge in a Forest School

Risk taking is widely understood to be a natural part of a child’s development. Adults who work with children are moving on from thinking of risk only in the context of ‘the risk assessment’ which decides those things are too dangerous to allow. But are rather looking at risk from a child’s point of view, making an analysis of the risks and the benefits to create a Risk Benefit Analysis (RBA). Risks and risk taking is even better understood when re-framed as challenges. Providing realistic challenges for children and allowing them to work through the challenges they set themselves supports their development, actively engages them and helps them better understand themselves and each other.

I am always fascinated to watch groups of children climbing trees. I remember years ago working with a little girl who was very risk averse, very challenge averse. She was part of a group of voracious tree climbers and she would watch them, anxiously reporting to the adults just how high the others were climbing. One day she stood on the lowest branch and, reaching up, tied a string on the trunk. Each week she would climb up and touch that string, until one day she felt ready to reach higher. She stood on a different branch and moved the string further up the trunk.

Recently I went out with a Forest School group who had been coming to the woods since the previous summer. They still climbed to the same height limits that we had set together months previously. But there was a change in the amount of support they required from the adults present. It had started with our active support and encouragement when they wanted to climb, more often than not we would talk them down when they climbed out of their comfort zone. This moved on to them needing our presence nearby, just in case, to the point where now they were climbing and moving around with ease. One of their classmates, who had not previously been out to the woods with us, joined in the tree climbing. Within moments had climbed higher, on different trees in a very different way, shinning up the trunk rather than climbing branch to branch, wedging himself comfortably, literally out on a limb.

Children’s responses to risk taking are as diverse as the children themselves.  Douglas & Wildavsky (1982) have suggested that there are four kinds of people when it comes to managing risk: Hierarchists, egalitarians, individualists and fatalists. Mark Gladwin (2005)₁ linked these different types of risk takers to the observations he made of children at play. You may recognise these types of risk takers in the children you know and work with.

Hierachists are those people who will naturally follow the rules, who deal with risk by following the procedures. If these procedures stress safety above all then these people are unlikely to find ways to push themselves out of the comfort zone. These are the children that look to you for permission before testing themselves and conform to set parameters, like the little girl and her string.

Egalitarians have strong group identification and emphasise group solidarity at the expense of official rules. These children, like the group I was watching climb trees had developed a group norm. They had set parameters for themselves as a group and no one person in that group was likely to engage in risk taking behaviour that didn’t conform.

Individualists are independent-minded and able to defy official rules and group pressures to make their own decisions on risk management.  Like the boy who joined the tree climbing group but went out on a limb, individualist children are the likeliest to engage in risk-taking of the kind described by Hughes (2001) as “deep play”.

Fatalists are those people who submit passively to external control without commitment to group norms or solidarity and take no steps to either avoid risk or manage it.  These children are the hardest to predict how they will respond to a risky situation. I wonder if their response to risk is borne out of inexperience in risky situations. Sue Palmer (Toxic Childhood 2006) says “All real children’s play involves an element of risk, and the more real play children are allowed the better they become at analyzing and managing those risks. If, on the other hand, adults try to eliminate risk from their lives they’re likely to grow up either unduly reckless or hopelessly timid.”

By observing the children we work with and understanding their approach, our response to their risk taking can become more informed. The risks we all take as humans take are not only physical but are social and emotional.  Forest School gives lots of opportunities for risk taking and challenge. For some children just being in woodland, especially if it this is an unfamiliar environment, is an emotional challenge. The opportunity to climb, move tree trunks, run on rough terrain etc provides endless physical challenges. Using tools and being around fire provides opportunity for physical and emotional challenges for children. Being in a group without the structure of a classroom and having to communicate with others, talking with a partner when using a saw to cut wood provides social, physical and emotional challenges. When someone overcomes a challenge, be it one that is set by ourselves or by others and we are given chance to reflect on how we feel, we offer the opportunity to build those critical qualities of self worth and resilience.

It is too easy under the guise of health and safety to try and remove the risks and therefore take away any challenge in the activity or environment for the children and it is worth noting that the child’s need for having a challenge, if not met, will often express itself in other ways including what we call ‘challenging behaviour’. The importance of a Forest school activity is in providing children the opportunity to take risks and build their self-confidence.

 “Most psychiatrists agree that mental health in adulthood springs from a successful weaning of the child from its parents, an ability to deal with the outside world confidently, without overdue dependence on adults. And making good relationships can only come with practice. Through unstructured play with others, children can work through their emotions and discover their identity.

If they are never free from adult supervision, they cannot internalise a parental voice or find a way of setting their own boundaries. They have no chance to do mildly dangerous things and find out how risks should be judged. They cannot chart their own course through the minor hazards of everyday life. Nor can they explore the real bonds of friendship and loyalty that are formed through common adventures with others their own age.”

(Sieghart, M. A. in the Times, 5 th August 1995)

References:

1 Playwords (Summer 2005 - Issue 26)

*This post, written by Lily, was originally published on Outdoor Play and Learning.com  in March 2011 and is republished here with their kind permission. 

Bridge that gap

I've written before about building rope bridges among the trees and how fantastic they are for children's motor development, encouraging social skills and confidence and being loads of fun.

What I have also found is that adults who work with children are equally as fascinated and enjoy learning the skills of tying the knots. I thought I would leave some notes here for a refresher for anyone who needs it (you know who you are :) and to maybe inspire you to have a try at tying rope bridges if you haven't yet.

I'll put in links to animated knot videos and drawings to help you along if you need it, but here's the thing about knots, some people learn by watching, some people learn by listening, some just have to have a bit of string and be shown. That's the way different people learn and it doesn't mean one way is better.

Trees:  you want to tie ropes from trees that are solid and secure. Give them a good look over, lean against them and look up noticing if they move too much when you put weight against them. Check there are no dead branches in the crown of the tree that could show a weakness or cause problems. Choose trees that are a good size, not so massive that all your rope gets used up tying on to them but big enough.

Protection: If you are going to leave them up and the tree are smooth skinned like beech or young ash trees etc then put something like carpet or thick fabric under the ropes to protect the bark.


Rope: I use 10ml (or thicker) polyprop rope. It's that cheapish blue stuff. Climbing rope can be too stretchy unless you have static climbing rope.
For length go for two pieces that are as long as a piece of string (!). Mine are about 10 metres each.

Once the children are interested in the idea I encourage them to be fully involved in tying the bridges, taking over completely after the first couple of times with my help. The older children tend to make them more challenging, going up slopes or with non-parallel lines.

Tying the knots: First end is wrapped around the tree three or four times. Tie with a couple of half hitches. The turns around the tree take the pressure off the knot

Wrap the second end of the rope around another tree, leaving a long long tail. go around the tree once and pull it tight "heave, heave etc",  I love getting the children involved at this stage, it takes much longer this way but is so much more fun and they definitely use the bridges more if they have built them.

The working end of the rope then goes over the top of the standing end and back round the tree in the opposite direction.
This is quite heard to type how to do this bit, so I have done a couple of doodles that may (or may not) help.


This end of the rope is tied to another tree.

                     This end of the rope is doing all the work.

           


























Repeat this 3-4 times so the rope is pulled tighter each time.







The zig zagging of each turn, pulled really tight, with more of the "heave, heave" shortens the rope. It is this which pulls it tight.


With the end of the rope, wrap it round and round in a twizzly timber hitch. This stops it over-tightening and is why you need to make sure you have a long long tail on your rope. If you haven't got a long end on the rope then a couple of half hitches works well but can get a bit fiddly to untie


Repeat with the second rope, about a child's height above the first rope. They don't need to be far of the ground to be challenging and the wobbliness adds to the physical challenge.                                                      
                         
                                               

Let me know how you get on! 

Baui means build, speil means play, platz means place.

For a few years I managed the transition of the only self-build Adventure Playground in Bradford, the Big Swing, from the statutory into the voluntary sector. Supporting the staff and managing the site through a period of transition gave me a real insight into the value of Adventure Playgrounds and the capability of children and young people.

In April this year I spent a week in Hamburg and Berlin with a study tour for play professionals co-ordinated by ip-dip.com and www.meynellgames.org. The tour took us to scrapstores, public parks and playspaces, community provision, waldkindergarten and green school playgrounds. We also visited a number of Adventure Playgrounds in both cities.

We first heard about the Adventure Playground movement in Hamburg and Berlin from Christe-Beate of the European Play Association (EPA). She was one of the first women to work on an adventure playground in Germany and a real advocate for play. What we hadn’t really understood was how the playgrounds fitted into society in the two cities;

Bauispeilplatz is known locally as 'the Baui'. Baui means build, speil means play, platz means place. I do love a German compound noun! 

Tony from the EPA playground invites us to visit the Baui with him. It has been open for nearly 30 years, since 1984. The tall tenement style houses crowd around the playground but mostly relationships with the local people are good, especially after the death of the Baui cockerel!

Armin, one of the playworkers, talked to us about the Adventure Playground and the things that children can do; jumping, building huts, lighting fires, arts and crafts playing football and keeping chickens. So far so familiar; but if you have never been to an adventure playground this doesn’t really convey a feeling of the place. The very first adventure playgrounds in Britain in the 1950’s were called "junk playgrounds" or "waste material playground" and this gives more of a sense of how a good adventure playground looks. 

“The junk playground should be characterized by signs of wear and tear. It should be a safety valve to children whose town existence otherwise keeps them nice and well-ordered.

John Bertelsen (1959)

The Baui definitely lives up to this description, like a refugee camp of the anarchies of childhood with heaps and piles, self expression and half finished and half started projects. This was also the day that I managed to completely break my camera in a game of tig-off-ground. This can be a dangerous place. Armin talks about the perception of how dangerous the playground looks; "children are not stupid, they can see dangers and learn to handle them and experience them and go to their limits. It is better they go to their limits here rather than in the Reeperbahn (the red light district two streets away) or with drugs" There are very few serious injuries. In 18 years Armin has seen 3 or 4 serious injuries. But many small injuries occur. 

Kai and Lukas are both young people who have grown up in the playground. Kai has been here 15 years, I ask him; "does it look the same?" "No! No way. It always changes." he describes himself as a child of the playground, a native. On an average day 90 children come to the Baui, mostly from close by, within 500 meters of the gates. The philosophy is that the gate is always open. No age limits, tiny children up to older teenagers. Parents come too, for advice, support and to socialise.

Most funding for the playground and the projects come from the City of Hamburg through Youth Project, Preventative and Social Deprivation funding streams. "Applications each year are the sword of Damacles"!  Although the Baui has been very lucky, or very creative and has escaped the worst of the cuts, the Ministry of Social Affairs is restructuring work with young people and there will be a move to another department which will inevitably bring about a new agenda, based more on individual interventions. The staff feels this is a contradiction to the philosophy of 'open gates' and makes the Baui become part of the authority. This may change how the baui is seen by the locality. On the day of our visit talks are going on at the town hall that will influence their ability to offer open access in the future. Charitable funding only makes up 5% of budget. Charitable funding is not an established way of working in Hamburg. 

Well ordered tool systems. I take note; hammers, numbered. With
 a board showing who has each hammer. Tickets issued with tools.

Changes to the school day in Hamburg are impacting on the playground. Children used to come after school at 1pm and eat lunch with the staff in a big communal meal, but this ended now the school day ends at 3pm . Some schools in St Pauli now send school groups here as part of the school day. The children come with the teacher, the playground offers activities but fundamentally what takes place is free play determined by the children. "Lessons after the Baui are calmer, when the children go back to school."

The change in the structure of the school day was seen to be a challenge at first, but actually by working closely with schools they are meeting and working with more children and families. They also do 'play actions' in schools and take groups out canoeing, on camping and hiking holidays to the countryside. The playground is relied on by many families to help them with things like reading letters or helping with social issues. 

There are 20+ playgrounds across Hamburg, all of which work in different ways. The playgrounds network together once a month and this playground is also part of local networks. They use these networks to support children who are finding it hard to access other provision. 

We have lunch at the Baui, this is still such a traditional part of the Baui day, staff, children and visitors all sit down together and eat. When children finished school at 1pm there would be lots of children here but today there are a few young people and 3 or 4 children under 12. Annie tries her German on one boy who is making faces at the green bits of leek in his soup. "Es ist grün" :(   Annie asks him in German if he thinks it will make him big and strong to eat his greens. A member of the staff asks again if he thinks so. "I don't understand English" he replies, poking his leek with his spoon. "But, she asked you in German!"... 

As everyone arrives there are greeting and hugs for staff and young people alike. There is a very relaxed family feeling.  Armin says that he has worked with generations of the same family, Bettina, who was one of the founders in 1984 still works here and I imagine there will soon be grandparents of children who come to the playground who were children on the playground themselves.

The hen house

We had passed another adventure playground when we had been walking around Hamburg, then, from the train we spotted another that looked very interesting so we ranged through the Sternzschanze and St Pauli districts, following(ish) the line the train had travelled. Annie's nose for direction is impeccable and we found another local adventure playground that is also protesting against the same cuts. It is closed now but we peer through the fences and look at the posters and signs on the fence. The realisation strikes us, we have seen playgrounds similar to these in the UK, some of our group have worked in or on them, but they are not in every neighbourhood like this. A map of all the playgrounds protesting the cuts shows the scale, and these are old, established parts of the community.

The dots on the map; bottom left, show the members of the
  bauiplatz association in Hamburg

When we move onto Berlin there are more chances to visit Adventure playgrounds. Founded on 2nd April 1990, less than 6 months after the fall of the Berlin wall, Kolle37 was the first adventure playground in former East Berlin. The impact of such provision in the political climate of the time is hard to fathom. It must have been a phenomenal leap for the staff involved, the organisation symbol has within it the anarchy sign and this speaks to me of how radical it must have felt at that time to be creating a project like this. 

Martin, who was the originator of the project, tells us that the things that most adventure playgrounds have in Germany are hut building areas, a fire place, the use real tools and places to keep animals. He describes the playground as a combination of 3 elements:

"- Dangerous supervised situation.

- You can build up and destroy.

- Social connections are needed, you cannot build a hut alone." 

The hut building area is at one end of the playground. They take it all down every year and then hold a hut building festival between March and June and rebuild. They have a well set up craft workshop, with a Blacksmith's forge and power tools. There is a replica stone age round house on the site which is used with schools for teaching lessons about stone age technology and history. There is an area designed for smaller children and when we look around there is a group of 2-3 year old children attending Kindergarten sessions. 

The kinder area

The main building on the playground was finished in 1999 and is the heart of the company Netzwerk Kultur/Speile . The main foyer is big enough for all the tables which are used for lunchtimes with the children. There have not yet been the reforms to the school day like there is in Hamburg so children finish school at lunchtime, they also have space they can go and do homework before going out into the playground. Kolle37 has a contract with the families of about 20 children to provide daycare on the playground but most children are free to come and go. 

The majority of the funding comes from The city of Berlin which provides for 3.5 full time equivalent staff which is used for 6 part time posts. The daycare group, of 20 children, funds another 1 full time equivalent post. The children who come to free play sessions are 6-16 years old. We ask about the reason behind the age limit; “They have to be over 6 because whilst the staff is responsible for everything they can't see everything. Younger children might not be able to perceive the dangers like loose planks or sticking out nails.”

We later come back to Kolle 37 to meet up with one of the playworkers. The site has 7 entrances so it is easy for children to come in and to leave but easy for adults too, we are asked to arrive just as the children are leaving. It's really important to Kolle37 to be an adult free space, so adults don't interfere with children's play processes, but also because of concerns about paedophiles or inappropriate adult behaviour. All adults on the site can be challenged as to why they are there.

"Parents corner." During the week parents are encouraged
 to spend time chatting with each other but away
 from the main part of the playground.

Marcus describes the way the playground works. “Every kid is welcomed and they try to find out their interests and tell them the rules such as don't climb on this particular roof. Some rules you can't put in a positive way. They can climb on all the other roofs but this one is not so safe.”

Every two weeks children and staff get together to talk about what is good, what is annoying and what rules work. Every person has one voice so the children can out-vote the pedagogues (the staff). There is a red, yellow and green card system similar to the one we saw in the playgrounds in Hamburg. Cards can be used as currency, yellow and red are given out for bad behaviour, green for good, which you can swap for more nails, more lunch, to make a phone call etc.

the rules

I am intrigued by this, we talked about similar systems on the playground I managed, the pros of being able to discourage behaviour that the staff found difficult to manage, the cons of unduly adulterising the children’s play process, the inconsistency of who got cards for what from the different staff members, the fact that the children who would buy in to such a scheme are not the ones who the staff needed to engage the most etc etc, the arguments went back and forth and we decided not to bring a scheme in. But here most of the playgrounds use this sort of scheme. Apparently the children here voted to remove this rule but when they found they couldn't use green cards to earn their lunch anymore it came back. 

The rules stay in place for at least a month. There is a mail box where they make suggestions based on things that come up during their play but rules are only discussed during meetings. Children can make petitions if they feel they are strongly attached to a particular rule or can't make the meeting. 

Sale of craft work made by children.
I did manage to get one of these back on the plane! 

The children come here by themselves after school, they have lunch and do homework before doing any projects they have in mind. There are special projects too at different times of year, like blacksmithing or the hut festival. I’m initially challenged by the idea of the hut building festival. One of the elements that we noticed on the Big Swing Adventure playground was the natural cycle of creation and destruction. The building of dens and treehouses which would gradually be abandoned and the materials ransacked for a better, more exciting project. This had a seasonal element, winter tended to be a time of destruction with the most fervent growth in spring.

The Hut Building festival at Kolle 37 means every hut was torn down and rebuilt at the same time.  Children work on one hut in the plan but they can change groups and huts at any time, they build the small model huts before hand they don't have to realise this plan exactly but it helps them plan how to make a hut. Each hut has the same space; 2m x 2m and they are limited to 4m in height. The kids have to dig a hole as deep as your knee for the posts to go into. Then the post goes in with rocks and is packed in well. Each hut gets 200 starting nails. It used to be 20 per person, but the children voted to change that.  When the hut is built they can spend a night in it. Occasionally children hide hammers so they can come and build in the evening. Occasionally they come in and destroy others houses but not so often. All much more structured than the processes I am used to.

 But when you explore the hut building area you can see how many huts they have managed to pack into what is in effect a tiny space, you sense the care and attention and skills these huts have been created with. Some look barely begun and are being built by very small children. Some are sophisticated and have complex security systems (I manage to overcome the most complex system for the best view by leaning a pallet against a wall and shimmying through a high window!) 

"Six years ago there was a very different social demographic. Kids needed something to do because they had nothing else." This is still true to some extent and some children are at Kolle37 all the times that it is open because they don't have a parent at home or because they don't have a parent who cares about them. There are an increasing number of children from more affluent families too, which was a challenge for staff but they have had a growing realisation that all children just need space to calm down and just because they have lots of lessons like piano or ballet they still need time and space to be themselves. 

“Here there is a levelling of the social structure because you will get dirty and you can't wear designer clothes everyday. You do need people to work together to make a hut.” 

Whatever they want to do they the staff help them realise it. 

For more about Adventure playgrounds in the UK;

http://www.adventureplay.org.uk/

http://www.playengland.org.uk/media/112552/pathfinder-adventure-playground-briefing.pdf

Read my journal from Hamburg and Berlin here:
Mobily trip journal

Annie's blog about Adventure playgrounds from the same trip: http://annieberrington1.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/adventures-in-play/

Green makes school

So the cliche goes, there are lots of things Germany does well; public transport, sausages, compound nouns... actually all these things are true, but I've been discovering that in Berlin and Hamburg there are some other things that are done well; challenging, exciting and sustainable play provision for children and young people.
I recently spent a week in Hamburg and Berlin with a study tour for play professionals co-ordinated by ip-dip.com and www.meynellgames.org. The tour took us to scrapstores, adventure playgrounds, public parks and playspaces, community provision, waldkindergarten and green school playgrounds. On Thursday we spent the day looking at school play ares in Berlin in the company of Manfred from Grün macht Schule; www.gruen-macht-schule.de.

Grün macht Schule is an organisation that exists as a collaboration between educationalists and landscape architects, It was set up as an advice centre for schools with funding from the City of Berlin that came through both the Education and Environment funding streams. In Berlin there are 850 schools. Grün macht schule have initiated projects with 500 schools of which 80/90 have been completed to date. We visited three of their projects at Galilei school, Neuemark school and Spreewald school.One of things that stands out with the three play areas are the similarities and the differences. There was definitely a similar feel to all three play areas; the use of dense shrubbery planting to create different spaces and places to hide, the use of light gravelly sand as a substrate and safety surface and the mixture of play structures, or 'play machines' in and amongst planting, recycled materials and natural elements. But the differences were the more striking, each one had bespoke elements, often designed and created with the chidlren and young people, artwork, sculptures and mosaics abounded making the places feel exciting to explore and distinctive. 

Carvings on upright peeled logs in Galelei School courtyard

Galilei School is in former West Berlin, but only 300m from Checkpoint Charlie which formarly was the only crossing point between both parts of the city. Here they undertook workshops with children and teachers to inform the architects. Interestingly there was no money from the school or funding identified initially and for Manfred this is an important part of setting the expectation with the school.  

Climbing and jumping wall, children worked with a stonemason to realise their designs. 

German school currently close at lunchtime, so from 2pm this is all open to the public. They still have to  close it in the evening because of  concerns about people in the space misusing drugs and alcohol. we ask about how the teachers supervise this area, this si always one of the main concerns from teachers when they are looking to transform their outdoor spaces to be more complex and have more 'hiding places'  The solution that Grün macht Schule suggests is really common sense. "Even if you can see an accident happen you cannot prevent it. It's better that a teacher stays in one place, where the children know where they will be." 

Our group wanders down the dry creek bed. When it rains the water  fills a a basin that is then pumped down the creek .

Neuemark primary school had a Grün macht schule project in 2004. The school has an 80% Turkish population and 5% German. The change to all day schooling which is being piloted in this part of Berlin has changed the nature of the way the play area is used. The school has breaks 3 times during the day with 15 mins each break as well as a lunch break.

During play times there are five teachers supervising the area, one teacher in every region, The interesting thing about the changes to all day school is that the schools are recognising the loss of children's free time , So in this school they also use the outside space for free time during the school day and when there are one or maybe two teachers supervising the area. Then the teachers stay in one spot and the children have to be where they can see that teacher. 

Lots of recycled bricks went into making the paved areas

  We ask about the concept of loose parts, could there be some of the elements of design that are not fixed down? Manfred and Georg struggle to find the German word for this which is 'bewegungsbaustelle' moving construction site- for kids. The concept is known here but features mostly in kindergartens. We ask Manfred if it would be better to have some of the poles and rocks not fixed but he recognises that it is a compromise and the parents and the schools aren't ready for it.

Manfred described some of the changes. "Before this was a playground only for boys, now less aggressive; groups have spaces and it is more quiet." The play area used to be dominated by football and the girls and other children had no spaces to play. Now there are lots of areas available including an area for football and there are spaces for groups to be together. There is also lots of evidence of children being in and amongst the bushes. Anti social behaviour has lessened and the school has found there are more smaller accidents but less larger ones.

One of the girls we talked to said her favourite thing to play was hide and seek, her favourite place to play was on these swings. 

The third play area we visit, adjacent to Spreewald school  has a 'play machine' that is unlike any other I have ever seen. We nickname it 'the rubber world'. The play area is in a landscaped park with stone amphitheatre and sculptures made by children and young people. There are few play structures but the dominating structure is a large frame from which hangs undulating rubber sheets and hanging rubber tiles. It is fascinating to watch the children at play on it we can't resist testing  it out and find it is a really challenging and flexible piece of equipment.

The play area is in a public park but the school children are all playing on it because they use the public park as their playground. A teacher sits by a pile of coats doing a suduko puzzle and chatting with some of the children who are taking a rest but otherwise the children are playing around the park. 

This is really fascinating to observe, five boys are running and catching each other, they jump to avoid collision with a young man you sits with his speakers in his ears and his head on his knees. Two boys are fighting with sticks, utterly absorbed in the running battle that consumes them. An older lady sits in her sunbathing outfit, catching the warm April sunshine. This is a fascinating example of the integration of public space and school play areas. The area was developed by and with the school for them to use, but is also a public space.

Annie burns rubber!

Manfred tells us that there has been a lobby from playground companies for plastic equipment to be used in Grün macht Schule projects but For Manfred it is important that kids in the city have natural experiences. They are now working with kindergartens to develop play spaces. They see that by starting in early childhood these spaces help children develop. Manfred talks of the importance of learning to fall correctly, by falling over a lot when you are young and  the importance of being exposed to sap and pollen to build up resistance.Their organisation has been able to fit with the external agenda on establishing the balance of ecology in the city, There used to be lots of money for this so lots of new play areas developed. But now for 3 years there has only been money for small projects. In Manfred's view money needs to come from society instead and for this it is critically important that parents are on board. If we came back in 5 years he guess times there would be another 5% of schools with this sort of space.

One of the things that has happened in the time when the project was developing lots of school grounds is that there has been lots of work been put in to work closely with the insurance department,. They see the importance of involving teachers, parents, to create something that is challenging but that doesn't go too far. Each project builds on previous ones and builds up the ideas with decision makers, children and parents about what is possible. One thing they have found is that here are more accidents. But critically there are more smaller accidents rather than more bad accidents. Insurance companies see that this is better and cheaper and things are changing across the city in favour of this sort of landscaping. It is this that is the main point i take away from our visits. This same process is happening in the UK. Projects are being inspired by the work of Grun Macht Schule and organisations like them and   working to create the same level of influence that has taken place in Berlin. 

Grounds for Learning video of playgrounds in Berlin here: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/video/g/video_tcm4665303.asp

Read my journal from Hamburg and Berlin here:
Mobily trip journal

Comfort-Challenge-Fear

"So, what makes you feel comfortable?"
This was the question I asked a group of seven to nine year olds this week. We were in the woods for the first session of our Forest School sessions and I wanted to help focus them on what they would be doing over the next few weeks. Their answers were the sort of this you would expect, sitting on the sofa, laying in bed, being wrapped up in a cozy blanket. We feel comfortable when we are doing things that are easy and we have done them before. But that isn't why children take part in Forest Schools.

Forest School programmes are about more than spending time in the woods and exploring. They are also about encouraging children's motivation and helping to develop positive attitudes, stretching the children and helping them realise their skills. These things just don't happen when you stay in your comfort zone.

Challenge: moving out of your comfort zone
 but still being able to function

This was how I explained to the group; we would be coming to the woods for Forest School and this is to challenge them, to try new things and for them to find out things they didn't know they could do. It is important for the children to be challenged but at the same time making sure they don't feel pushed too far.

I've been thinking about this model for a while, it is in common parlance in adventure activity circles and leadership management but I don't normally share this sort of thinking directly with the children. I was talking with a friend Kirsty who is a youthworker about how she shares models like this with the young people and this is so simple I knew the seven to nine year olds could get it too. So we laid out the different elements and talked about how important it is to move out of your comfort zone. They got it straight away and I saw lots of self motivated behaviour.

Comfort zones are such a personal individual thing and this is where the most important challenge for these children will come from. The challenge they set themselves.

Making Weapons and Group Agreements

I am, by nature a peaceful sort. However I often find myself building and making weapons. I do like the satisfaction of seeing a stick shooting off into the distance fired by a home made bow and we have made some constructions (that could best be described as siege engines!) that would fire pebble a good distance.

I have written before about the theory of recapitulative play and I feel that weapon making fits alongside fire making and shelter building. In the regular, day to day life of the average 21st century child in a developed country these are skills that have very little practical application. But there is something about them that has such a strong impulse and compulsion for children (and adults). 

I also feel it is important to allow children to explore this compulsion, especially when we live in a world where children are exposed to so many images of war. Through play a child learns to make sense of the world they experience and inhabit, so there is a value of them being able to 'play it out'. However this sort of play can upset or even hurt other children so needs to be carefully observed and managed.

Making bows and arrow sets is one of those things that I rarely introduce deliberately into my sessions but I respond to with glee if it emerges with a group. It is great for self esteem and children feel powerful and trusted being allowed to have a bow and arrow. I wrote an article about dynamic risk management recently. When something like this emerges in a session I feel it is important to be able to respond and reset some new rules and conditions For me it means you get to establish rules with one or two children and support them a lot. Another sees what we are doing and joins in, we repeat the rules we have come up with, repeat ad infinitum, so by the time the whole group is involved (if they are) we all know the rules intimately. That way it is easier than me banging on about safety, as they are having to do that themselves, for each other. 

I aim for bow and arrow sets with an element of built in obsolescence. That gets us round the inevitable question of 'are they allowed to take them home?' which wouldn't be appropriate in some instances. Beyond that on the most basic level you can get a stick that is just slightly thicker than your thumb and about the length of your arm and has some flex in it and a piece of string. Trying different string to see which works best is a good exploration of materials. Whittling a notch in the end of the stick stops the string sliding off The string is tied to one end and then that end is placed to the ground and the stick is bent as much as you can before tying the other end of the string onto the stick. The stick bends back into place putting the tension on to the string. This will then fire another straight-ish stick, which you can whittle a bit to make a point, a reasonable distance. Holding and pulling back the arrow stick rather than the string is easier for some kids to manipulate.

Setting group agreements on safety normally starts with me trying the first made bow (and hopefully getting it into the long grass a good 15- 20 feet away followed by a bit of woooah from everyone, including me.) Before I hand it over i say, "This comes with responsibility. What do you think the rules are?" I then go with every safety rule than seems logical and we agree those. As a minimum I look for firing away from people or animals, or firing at a target if there is a bigger group. The ideas they come up with might include shouting "ready-aim-fire" so people know you are firing and don't walk into the line of fire, shooting out of the boundary that normally applies but being allowed out to fetch arrows, watching out for people walking through the woods if it is a public wood. 

The trickiest point comes if you have a target and people want collect arrows whilst other people are firing. So getting them to put a system in place is important. (Flag up for fire, flag down for collect / Having an adult say when you can collect) 

By establishing the rules by collective agreement the children are no longer passive participants in their own safety and well-being. They are actively identifying the risks, thinking of solutions and most importantly reminding each other and me. I used to try and spend time at the start of sessions getting all the ground rules in place that would last us for the rest of time. Children would be bored and fidgety, they found it hard to imagine the situation let alone understand the potential ways that rules should apply and would just repeat the rules they had had drilled in to them elsewhere. The point when a child who was asked what they thought the rules should be for a session in the woods said "no running" was when I realised, they were on 'ground rule autopilot'! Now I rely on spontaneous group agreements that respond to the situation we are in. It starts from the assumption children know what to do and works forward into the new situation.

Targets with bells on. 

Set up to respond to a group who loved throwing stones

With bows and arrows or any made weapon in Forest school, I always add my own rule. Once we have agreed the rules I get to claim the weapon as my own for ever and ever if a rule gets broken. I very rarely need to use my rule.