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The Jack and Jill Learning Center, owned by Carolyn Downs and her daughter, Jennifer Schuler, had the typical playground full of trucks, dolls, slides and lots of sand.
And it would have stayed that way, until Downs read “Last Child in the Woods — Saving our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder” by Richard Louv. In this book, Louv offers studies that point to direct exposure to nature as essential for a child’s physical and emotional development. He links the lack of nature in children’s lives and the rise in obesity, attention disorders and depression.
“This book made me realize that our center was lacking in what we offered children for outdoor play and exploration,” Downs said. “I realized that children who don’t experience nature won’t grow up to cherish or protect it.”
Downs suggests that people need to unplug children from video games, cell phones and computers, and look for ways to consciously and thoughtfully bring nature back into their lives.
“I began to pray about our playground and what we could do to change and improve it,” Downs said. “I made some phone calls and was led to Matthew Condley of Condley Landscape. While we were trying to describe what our center wanted, Matthew tried to see our vision. He came back to us with an awesome design for our playground to be transformed into a playscape.”
With support from parents, and a $1,000 grant from Cherokee Nation, the playscape is well on its way to becoming a gateway to nature. A playscape is an outdoor play area that is more natural and park-like rather than one that supports manufactured playground equipment, she said.
“It didn’t take long for the typical playground to be transformed by adding a crawl-through tunnel, a stage, a faux stream with river rocks, and a variety of grasses.”
According to Downs, Condley Landscape was an asset to the project.
With all the renovation, a lot of well-known playground structures were removed, such as the monkey bars. Instead of metal playground equipment, the center now has a stage, log balance beams, stumps to sit on, and a hut in the corner where the kids can sit and watch the birds and squirrels. The children also can walk in the stream and look for creatures under the rocks, learn about science and math in the vegetable garden, or just sit around the stage and tell stories, she said.
“Our playscape is a work in progress,” Downs said. “Now, only time will tell what the end result will be. We hope our playscape is the fire that rekindles the sense of wonder for everyone at our center.”
