Playful Learning Landscapes: Creating skill-building experiences in community spaces
By Molly A. Schlesinger and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University
(Childhood Education Innovations, July/August 2019)
Children are always learning. Innovative initiatives that offer opportunities for learning and skill building in environments outside of school are as important as ones designed for the classroom.
Research suggests that over 70% of the world’s children will be living in cities by 2050. In response, cities are rallying to create family friendly environments—making parks where ribbons of asphalt once divided communities and creating community gathering places all can enjoy. Playful Learning Landscapes is part of this broader initiative. It is the very first project to marry the science of how children learn with the ambition to make cities more livable. At that intersection of science and placemaking, we are creating a new kind of architecture that sparks curiosity and learning while at the same time heightening the beauty of the cityscape.