Picture This!

Finally updated the Nature Play Corps blog with photos from the play pocket I made with Britani and Kara on our last play day.  Some of these pictures were taken by the kids-- check out their perspective!  Read it here.  Here's my favorite one:

In the News!

Check out a news article about our program and play days that was written in the local news!  We have been so busy we didn't even find it until today... that's also the reason my posts have been so short recently.  We only have 3 days left and so much to do!

The Enchanted Forest: From the Trees

Read a post I wrote on our Nature Play Corps blog about our second play day with kids!  And see photos of the Enchanted Forest... here.

Play in the UK

As I have alluded to in a previous post, there is a major disconnect happening between children and the outdoors.  The Nature Play Corps Program is only a pilot program for the effort to resist this disconnect.  While we are not the first to be working on getting kids into nature, there are few before us in the US.

The United Kingdom is far ahead in the use of play as a tool to engage kids in nature and in learning.  One charity in the center of that activity is the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK.  Eden is a constructed rainforest in the middle of the clay soil and cold climate of Cornwall.  The rainforest "biomes" are surrounded by more lush gardens and scattered play areas.  Eden is not just a place for kids to play-- it engages adults alike with cultural events, etc.

One project happening at Eden is the "Mud between your toes" project, which is specifically focused on the child-nature disconnect.  Read a great report about the problems with the disconnect and the benefits of nature play.  Mud between your toes also partners in a program called Muddy Shorts (sorry, not a website yet!), which focuses on creating nature play opportunities that are equally accessible to children of all physical capabilities.  Really cool example: a raft building program that also has a floating wheelchair!

I learned about these really cool projects because this week we hosted Philip Waters, Play Program Coordinator at the Eden Project, as our guest facilitator.  Besides learning plenty of new English phrases, Phil showed us so much more about understanding play work.

Phil taking footage of us building tiny Guardit communities.

Canis roooooooooooo-fus

So in a previous post I described the fire that is devouring Alligator River Wildlife Refuge, and the awe of going there to see the burnt forest.  What I did not mention is that this refuge is also the site of the Red Wolf Recovery Program, a USFWS effort started in 1987 to re-introduce the endangered animals into the wild from captive-bred animals.  To learn more about the animal, the program, and its success, follow this link.

Last night just as the sun was setting, the Play Corps team was taken onto the refuge by Bonnie Strawser, director of visitor experiences (also our friend now).  We very quietly drove many miles into the refuge, part of the way without headlights, and very silently exited the vehicles, hardly making a sound as we shut the doors.  By now we were in total darkness, lit by a full moon and surrounded by glittering lightning bugs and screaming peepers and other frogs.  Bonnie left us and several minutes later we heard her solitary howl to the small pack of captive wolves currently held in the refuge.  We waited, flexing our listening muscles and holding our breaths.  Then we heard them.  One voice at first, but it was soon supported by a second and then more.  There were long songs, low and high tones, short yips chiming in, voices that sounded like screams... together sounding like a beautiful, perhaps frightening, orchestra of animals hiding in the dark woods.

Eventually, they quieted down and then it was our turn.  Together we howled at the moon, trying to mimic the sounds we had just heard.  All 20 of us howled and yipped-- being part of that gave me a feeling not quite like anything else ever.  I guess we have kind of become a pack ourselves in our first week together.

We listened for the wolf pack to answer our second howl.  This time there was a longer pause.  Perhaps we sounded like a larger pack than they wanted to mess with, or were trying to figure out why they heard more voices the second time.  Eventually, though, they answered with their yells, both beautiful and eerie.

The Wolf Howl is a public program conducted at the refuge once a week, all summer in June, July, and August.  It is their most popular program, and I totally understand why!

Weekend in Manteo

Our first weekend in Manteo was one chock-full of things to do!  And we tried to do as many of them as we could.  We started the day with walking to the Manteo farmers market.  Set up right on the water, we perused local crafts, produce, and other edibles.  I got some delicious shiitake mushrooms, a gorgeous tomato, a ginger peach popsicle, and this gorgeous mug.

I love the dark colors with the turquoise!  It also has dolphins on it.

Next we returned home to attend the Pea Island "Crab Rodeo."  Pea Island is a national wildlife refuge, and crabbing is prohibited all year... except for one Saturday in June from 9-noon.  Our whole group caught eight crabs in just one hour on our chicken-neck lures.  It was pretty fun, but our catch very quickly died (it was pretty tragic), so we didn't actually get to enjoy any crab that night...

And I caught the first one!!

Next some of us went to the Kite Festival at Jockey's Ridge State Park.  Just driving up, we could see so many kites up in the sky, and really cool ones too!  There were scuba divers, crazy spinning kites, squid, long kites, and my favorite was the HUGE whale and baby whale!

Look at that whale kite compared to the teeny people!

Besides being filled with kites, Jockey's Ridge is the largest dune on the Atlantic Coast.  As soon as we reached the end of the boardwalk and stepped on to the sand, I felt like I was in the middle of an expansive desert, even though there was a highway right on the other side of the dune!  The crazy thing is that it is always changing shape, moving with the wind.

One of the kite pros.

We came home after a surprisingly fortunate (meaning both delicious and affordable) lunch find at the Blue Moon Cafe.  That evening we tried to walk to a brewery we had spotted near the farmers market that morning, but it was closed by the time we got there.  We wandered into a bar with live music that was right across the street, and listened to a two-man-band called "Pairadocs" (they are both chiropractors... heh) which turned out to be a very fun evening.  Meanwhile Terry and Will, some of my co-interns, befriended a man who does sailboat cruises, and actually scored all of us a free two-hour sunset cruise the next night.  I KNOW RIGHT!!  The cruise was beautiful.  It reminded me a lot of home on the Patuxent River.  But before the sun set, it disappeared behind the thick smoke layer on the horizon...

Indescribably special

Today was the day we have been anticipating all week-- actually playing with kids!  Myself and my two teammates constructed a play pocket themed “Bug City,” surrounded by pre-existing magical vines, a fort we made from nearby forest matter, and some structures that already looked like tiny creature homes.  In the pocket, we had some bug costume objects, magnifying glasses and bug boxes.  Our intention was to be as hands-off as possible and encourage free play, and we didn’t really know what to expect…

The third group of kids to enter (we had three 30-minute sections) was three kids: two boys and one girl, ages 6, 6, and 3.  Before we could do anything to introduce the site, they quickly started to deconstruct the path to build a life-size teepee!  They were swinging whole trees around to prop them against a huge pine at the corner of our pod, with enough space to scurry through... and then, suddenly, Bug City was under siege, being attacked by one of the kids and Sarah (my teammate), attacking another child and Kaitlyn (other teammate)—the good bugs, the playworkers’ roles having been assigned by the kids.

The way we participated in their play was the ideal free play situation.  The children created the rules and roles of the game, and invited us to be part of it, assigning us roles.  For the previous two groups, we were having trouble understanding our roles as free play workers.  Like, in the first group, we stood on the edges or more out of the way and watched.  The kids felt self-conscious and had trouble finding the objects we had planted in our site to afford exploration or imaginative play.  They quickly ran out of stuff to do and were waiting for permission or instructions from us or the adults in their group.  With the second group, we involved ourselves more, engaging with the kids so they were occupied with our provided environment for longer.  But these kids were not free playing either, waiting for guidance from us or the adults.  By allowing the third group of kids to define the space themselves, they felt free to invent the situation themselves, and use us as part of it.

But back to that third group... The youngest of the three children chose to dig in the dirt while the others invented the good bug- bad bug game, searching for worms or anything else living under ground.  He was curious about what he might find, and began to discover some potential living space!  As he dug, he asked me to help him dig, and to also look at what he was finding.  After each couple of digs, he checked uncovered soil with a magnifying glass, passed it to me to look, and confirmed that he was certain there was something living in there. 

Checking the hole!

Soon, though, the dramatic play surrounding him threw some of the warring bugs into jail (the fort), and he jumped in to free them with his special protective powers. 

"You're free!  I'm protecting you!"

However, once all were safe again, he returned to his digging and investigating.  The ability of this young child to pass between focused investigation and involvement in the dramatic play throughout was incredible.  And the imaginative power of all three children, as well as the clear role they wanted us playworkers to play in their game felt so right.  

Also, the whole day was just plain fun.  Playing with kiddos in the woods all day?  OKAY.

Here's more play photos:

Bug dress-up!

Checking out a roly-poly.  One girl told me about it; "I touched it!"

Investigating a pine cone very close-up!

She was trying to decide what part of Bug City this was.

Kaitlyn fell in a booby trap.

Prototype tomorrow

Today we built "play pockets" to be tested on real life children tomorrow morning.  The heat index was 100, and we did quite a bit of physical work and even more mental work.  Way too tired to blog after a day of playing in the hot hot woods...

Alligator River Fire

If you live in North Carolina, you have probably gotten smoke blown in from the fire thats been burning for the past 5 weeks in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge at the coast.  This refuge is one of the main ones we are working with for the internship, and we are living very close to it in Manteo.  In mornings and evenings the smoke gets dense on the island, and we can pretty much smell it all day.

Alligator River is the largest national wildlife refuge in North Carolina and southeastern Virginia, and the second largest in the southeastern United States.  It was also the first refuge established NOT to protect animal species, but actually to protect the pocosin habitat type.  Pocosin is a habitat characterized by deep organic soil, named for the Algonquian word for "swamp on a hill."  This fire-adapted wetland ecosystem is usually heavy in pine and shrubs, growing out of the boggy floor.  Pocosin is also found nowhere else in the world besides the North Carolina coast.

The 152,000 acre refuge has been on fire since May 5, when the fire was started via lightning strike.  The wild fire worked its way upward, eastward, and westward from its site of origin near the Parched Corn Bay.  By now it has consumed 45,000 acres of refuge, and is still on fire.  We have heard stories about fire fighters seeing flames more than 100-feet above the tree line and power lines sunk into the ground.  The deep organic soil can continue to burn below ground even after the trees have been extinguished, making it a difficult fire to fight.  The estimated cost of fighting the fire thus far is $7.4 million... and it's still burning.  The fire still has potential to enclose people living at Stumpy Point (blocking them from land escape) and crossing over to human civilization on the inland side.  Interested?  Follow up-to-date reports: http://www.inciweb.org/incident/2218/


Today we went for a bear watch at the refuge (saw 6 WOOO!!), and after drove over to see the fire damage from the road that runs straight through it.

The forest was so creepy (re: the elephant graveyard, Lion King)

It was so cool to see all of the green already emerging from the ashes!

Take a group of play workers to a burnt forest? What do you think would happen...

Just Play

The main focus of today's action was to get back in touch with understanding play.  And we basically learned how to play.  I was going to write a bunch about it, but the pictures say it all:

We got close playing the magic carpet game.  Successfully solidified the moat and avoided the trolls.

Carly played her 'found' instrument...

... and together with Amelea and Benji performed an original song.

Assir was Old Mr. Ladybug, kicking unwanted berry-pickers out of his berry patch.

Stephanie, Will, and Kara built a den.  It included a fire and chief necklaces.

Myself, Sarah, and Kaitlyn built a mini community.  It had houses, a  grocery store, ice cream truck, drive-in movie theater, lake with a sailor and a romantic bench, a wildlife refuge, and a community art piece with a picnic area.  It was inhabited by pine cone people.

Jess Hoffmire (Visitor Educator at the NC Zoo-- she is SO GOOD at playing.) and Amelea discovered an abandoned boat in the woods... and also some sinking mud

And we did a lot more, too.  Our debrief at the end of the day took a whole hour because everyone was so inspired and reminiscent about our childhood play-- so much of which was deep rooted in nature.  We also felt instantly comfortable and close with each other, like we have been together for much longer than 2 days.  Can't wait for tomorrow.

Heart Before the Head

Today was chock-full of introductions.  We met our facilitators and each other some more, we went to the site and interacted with our workspace for a couple hours, and we met Bonnie Strawser, the US Fish and Wildlife director of visitor experiences at Alligator River and Pea Island-- 2 of the 8 refuges located on the coast of North Carolina.

The goal of our project is to provide spaces for children (in families or classes) to have meaningful experiences in nature.  As our communication technologies advance and become more prevalent in homes, young generations of children become more and more out-of-touch with nature.  And with a quickly expiring Earth passing into the hands of this generation, how can we expect them to conserve spaces they feel no connection to or value in?  Programs at local (Brookfield Zoo, Chicago) or national (Children & Nature Network) levels are working to counter this disconnect at an emotional level.  Play programs like those viewed in these examples are child-focused and child-directed, less like the educational structure we often think about when designing childrens programs at nature and science centers.  And with play as the main component, an emotional connection is fostered, inspiring compassion for wild animals or curiosity about creepy crawlers or thirst for climbing new trees... Education occurs along the way, but not before engaging the heart.

When we visited the site today, we cleared the trail to our main work base at the future site of the "Gateway" Visitor Center.  This center will serve as a starting and central point, where individuals, families, or classes will come for information about all of the wildlife refuges in the area, and perhaps be inspired to travel to certain ones to see them.  Our work site is separate from the location of the actual visitor center (currently under construction), but not far.  It's still pretty wild--snakes and box turtles abound!-- and it is the location of a future environmental education pavilion.  With 20 sets of hands and some tools, we did fast work!

The new trail entrance appeared!

"Nature Play Corps"

My adventures and training that I'll be reporting about in the coming weeks are part of an internship titled "Nature Play Corps."  This program is a pilot project as part of the 21st Century Youth Conservation Corps Initiative, launched by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar with the goal of giving youth a direct experience of nature and related careers.  There are some other parties interested in providing opportunities for youth in nature that are involved in this program.  Tell ya about 'em later.

In our internship, me and 14 other interns, as well as some really knowledgeable facilitators (who will eventually be in my photos), will be working with U.S. Fish and Wildlife educators within wildlife refuges on the coast of North Carolina.  At these sites we will be designing, building, and prototyping spaces that will engage children in nature through play.  More about this in future posts...

Tonight I drove to the site and settled in a little bit, met the really awesome team, took a quick group trip to the OCEAN (oh, like, 3 miles away), and off to bed for my first day tomorrow!