Shackell: Design for Play Review

The primary objective of this blog was to make the reader look at how
play is important to growing minds found in children, as well as more developed
minds. It also talks about several locations that implement policies to encourage
playing amongst the populace. The second chapter actually talks about how to
design a very good play space for the children. In doing so, the author went on to
state what they believe to be ten important rules that should be followed when designing
a better play space. Several of these include, placing the space close to nature, design so
that the space can evolve with time and maintain itself. Overall, I believe that these points
stated by the author can greatly benefit us when designing the play space for this class.

Progress Report #1 1/15/10

Weekly Meetings, Tuesday 4:30 @ SC

Ideas:
Travis: half-pipe with fiber optics, waves of color going down the tunnel. pressure sensors on the outside/xylophone. If you hit the outside, on the inside it changes colors (ex - blue/green to red). domes with holes on the end. safety exit in middle.

Take elements from existing playgrounds:

- things with bars, outline of cubes
- places to hide
- climbing
- narrative
- metal cacti
- pirate wheel
- tether ball
- sound wall (whisper and hear each other)

Involve adults and children
Get parents to play with their kids with/on/in the structure

- benches

- trail surrounding the structure


Themes
- nature

spiral trench of dirt /gardening
garden, synthetic light
- education

music

health

learning with physical motion (jumping or tugging)

Physics (Rube Goldberg)
- narrative

pirates

wrecked ship

island

tree house

outer space

swiss family robinson

- Food
- Music
bongos

xylophone

speaking sound-transferring things (whistling affecting something)

sliding pipes for kids to rearrange

musical instrument that is also a structure to be climbed on
- swinging, tire swing, climbing with pipe structure
- space for competition

battle with light

human pong

-Farm

--> come up with unifying theme and narrative, role play space