Note: This is part 2 of a 2-part series. Want to know more about the basics of adult supported adventurous play (AKA risky play), read part 1. In this blog, we get into the nuts and bolts of HOW to implement adventurous play in early childhood and school aged care settings.
Quick recap: Sandsetter’s 8 types of risky play:
1. Play at Speed
2. Play at Heights
3. Play with Dangerous Tools
4. Play with a chance of being lost
5. Play with Dangerous Elements
6. Rough and Tumble Play
7. Play with Impact
8. Vicarious Play
Take a moment to think….which of these kinds of risky play might you feel most comfortable in supporting. That’s our starting point.
Overlaying the context of your service:
Now we’re going to segway a bit into ‘place-based pedagogy’ – ie understanding our contexts. Stick with me, this bit is critical because it’s going to shape our approach.
Think about the community you serve.
- Do children live on large blocks of land in the country? Inner city apartments? Council Flats? Suburban blocks?
- Do children have access to green spaces, tree climbing, fort making and space to run at home?
- Are families within your service and community generally risk averse or risk supportive? What makes them this way?
- What do children do at home in spare time? Attend adult-led sports? Ride horses? Ride motorbikes? Stay inside? YouTube it?
- What opportunities are there for young people to partake in adventurous play during school hours?
Making a mind map can provide a wonderful snapshot of your community and provides a starting point for planning on how to implement adventurous play.
Understanding more about your colleagues:
Mind mapping your teams’ attitudes to, and comfort levels with adventurous play can help us establish a starting point and action plan.
The idea is to find a central starting point that provides enough stretch without being overwhelming yet also continues to push our natural comfort barriers needed for pedagogical growth.
Gathering the mind maps together, we can begin to scope out a strategy by deciding on a starting point and mapping out the tasks that are needed to create a plan and put it into action.
Risk-benefit analysis
‘Benefit’ being the key here. It is important to add the benefits of the activity alongside the risks in order to gain a full data set to inform your decisions. If the benefits outweigh the risks, the activity holds developmental merit. If the risks outweigh the benefits, it provides an opportunity to rethink the activity to explore other methods of meeting children’s needs. Scan this QR Code for a Benefit Risk Assessment template.
Language to support adventurous play: building risk literacy
Risk literacy relates to our ability to perceive risk and make appropriate decisions to manage this risk. For children, this could be learning how to test branches and stay close to the trunk while climbing a tree.
Learning how and when to take a risk and to develop risk assessing skills, takes practice and time. Children need to have repeated exposure to risk from an early age in order to develop these skills.
When children are offered opportunities to explore appropriate, supported risk, they steadily build confidence in their own bodies and decision-making. The ability to develop risk literacy through hands on lived experiences are solidly proven by research. So much so, German insurance companies are demanding more risk in public playgrounds as "safety culture is stunting kids' risk assessing abilities”, in their opinion. Read the article here.
What to say instead of “be careful!”
In order for children to engage safely in adventurous play experiences, we need to teach them actual skills and critical thinking by using problem solving language.
Next time you feel a “be careful” bubbling up, try one of these phrases
- Notice how…
- The bars are wet, the rocks are wobbly, that branch is rotten?
- How are you feeling?
- In your tummy? In your mind?
- Try using your….
- Hand, foot, legs, arms
- What’s your plan...
- If you climb that tree, if you can’t reach that branch, if you go up too high?
- What can you use…
- To bridge the gap, to make it safer, to keep others from being hurt?
Another supportive strategy is say what you see, then ask a question. It helps children tune into their own thinking, builds problem-solving skills, and honours their capability.
“That saw looks super sharp. How are you planning to use it safely?”
“I can see you’re keen to jump off that big box, and there’s a bike on the ground nearby. What do we need to do first to make it safe to jump?”
If you’d like to explore why this approach works so well – and how to weave it into adventurous play – we’ve unpacked it more deeply in our blog. (LINK)
Implementation time
You’re ready to go! Take it slowly, reflect as you go, and adjust your risk benefit analysis as necessary. Once you’ve nailed the first step, move onto your next goal.
You’ve got this.
Keen to dive deeper?
We’ve created two professional learning options to help your team feel confident supporting adventurous, needs-meeting play:
• 1-hour webinar – a practical introduction to adult-supported adventure play
• 2-hour face-to-face workshop – hands-on learning for whole teams