51 things your kids should do before they turn 12
OUR kids are spending less time outdoors than ever before. So new organisation Nature Play SA is helping children to get out into our yards, parks and beaches.
IT’S a growing phenomenon that unites political foes, spans tiers of government and community groups, and has experts in health, education, gardening and the environment singing from the same hymn sheet. In an increasingly partisan world it seems like everyone agrees on one thing – outside is in.
Climbing a tree, cycling to school and walking to a friend’s house are common childhood memories for anyone born before about 1990, but these simple pleasures have become a historical curiosity for many children.
Australian kids are spending less time outside than ever before – fewer than two hours a day on weekends on average.
One in four has never climbed a tree, one in three has never visited a national park or gone bushwalking. Only a third of children play outside every day.
Anxious parents, risk-averse institutions and ubiquitous electronic entertainment have created a perfect storm of sedentariness that’s posing a clear threat to our kids.
“Children are spending less time outdoors than ever before,” says Dr Jane Webb-Williams from the UniSA’s School of Education. “My research suggests that some children in Adelaide are spending 100 per cent of their free time indoors.”
A specialist in children’s social and emotional development, Webb-Williams is concerned that a lack of unstructured playtime is contributing to a growing public health crisis, with nearly 20 per cent of South Australian four- and five-year-olds classified as obese or overweight, and 14 percent of those aged four to 17 suffering mental health or behavioural problems.
“Play is crucial for children’s development,” Webb-Williams says. “Nature play allows children to discover and engage with the natural environment, it promotes more active physical play than indoor play, children develop and refine locomotor skills, manipulative and stability abilities and it provides open-ended activities such as sand and water play.
“This kind of play, which is unstructured and initiated by the child, is very different from other activities children may do because children are in control. They make decisions for themselves – making up the rules, the script, the direction of the play – everything. It really allows children to think creatively and to problem-solve for themselves without adult involvement.”
Nature play, the kind of unstructured outdoor play that was once synonymous with childhood, has become the basis for a global movement that is aiming to reverse the trend towards passive, indoor leisure that has gripped the Western world over the past 20 years.
In February, the state government committed $2 million to Nature Play SA, a new organisation dedicated to re-establishing playing outdoors as a regular part of childhood.
Sarah Sutter has been appointed as Nature Play SA’s CEO. Sutter is best known as a netballer. As a member of the Australian team she won Commonwealth gold and a world championship. She was also vice-captain of the Adelaide Thunderbirds, appearing in 10 consecutive grand finals.
Sutter has an impressive off-field CV too, as a teacher, San Francisco sales manager for Qantas, board member of Guide Dogs SA/NT and sponsorship coordinator for the Adelaide Film Festival – but her motivation for her current position is more personal.
“People who know me say this job is just me,” Sutter says. “I grew up on Yorke Peninsula. I’d spend all summer on the reef at Black Point, looking for blur-ringed octopuses, feeding pelicans. When life got tough in the sporting world I’d always go back to nature, always find comfort in nature. I think kids deserve to experience what I had as a child.
“I’m here because I think we can make a difference in people’s lives. We can’t get rid of the screens, but it’s about giving kids some balance, getting them interacting with nature. That can mean different things for different people. For some families it’s just a matter of getting the kids out enjoying the sunshine in the backyard, for others it’s exploring a national park, riding a bike or climbing a tree.”
Nature Play SA is developing resources aimed at getting parents, teachers and children outside and into nature. Its website, natureplaysa.org.au, features a list of “51 Things to Do Before You’re 12” with suggestions that include make a mud pie, play chasey in the rain, sleep under the stars and fall off your bike.
Soon to be released are the NPSA’s “Passports to An Amazing Childhood”.
Kids will be assigned secret missions via the Nature Play website, recording their accomplishments in their passports. Aimed at kids up to 12, a modified version for the under-fives is also being prepared.
Families also get a free pass to an national park of choice, with 13 to choose from.
Sutter says a key goal for the NPSA is to connect people from different fields.
“We’ll be partnering with councils, schools, parent groups – everyone we can,” she says. “I see us as a resource and communication tool to empower others. When you speak to people, no matter what their background, everyone is enthusiastic about this. Our message is positive, it’s a good thing to do, it’s fun, and one great thing about nature play is that 95 per cent of it is free.”
Playing outside might be free, but promoting it isn’t: Sutter’s fundraising and sponsorship skills will be vital to the success of her fledgling organisation. The government’s seed funding only covers the first four years of operation, after which the NPSA has to stand on its own two feet.
“Our intention is for Nature Play SA to be an independent organisation funded by non-government players,” says Ian Hunter MLC, Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation. “We’ve modeled it exactly on Nature Play WA, which is independently funded by the corporate sector and philanthropic benefactors.”
Hunter says it isn’t a hard sell to get people to buy in to the nature play concept.
“It’s common sense,” he says. “People grabbed onto this concept with great pleasure. When I launched Nature Play SA the audience was chock-a-block, it was standing room only. This idea is bringing together a critical mass of people with a huge range of experience – academic, sporting, childhood development, environmental science. It really crosses so many different areas of government and society.”
Like Sutter, Hunter’s enthusiasm for the concept has its roots in his own childhood. “I was fortunate enough to grow up near the Torrens,” he says. “I’d hop on my bike and spend the whole day exploring the banks of the river. I ended up being a biologist. That experience followed me throughout my tertiary education and working life.
“My great hope is that kids will start to learn their own sense of wonder at the natural world. From my perspective as Environment Minister, I hope we can encourage children to connect with nature because that’s where they’ll learn to respect it and they’ll want to protect it later on.
“This is fun. That’s the great thing about it. It brings young parents together. Isolation can be a problem, especially in some of the outer suburbs. This has the power to get families together while the kids are having a ball. We’ve got quite a good system of urban parks, we’re putting more investment into our parks and we want to encourage people to use them more.”
Local councils are starting to do their part, too, with an increasing emphasis on nature play elements in parks and playgrounds.
At the City of Marion, landscape architect Peter Semple is leading the charge.
“I see landscape architecture as being at the forefront of change,” he says. “We need to make local play spaces more appealing, more adventurous and more accessible. I say ‘play space’ because I want to get away from the idea of a playground as a standardised, fenced-in area of soft-fall in a corner of a park and shift the focus to more natural elements like logs, rocks, sand and plants.”
Semple has been at the forefront of nature play in South Australia, pre-empting the formation of NPSA with his own ‘Nature Play SA’ page on Facebook, inspired by the Western Australian model.
“I was designing playgrounds,” he says. “They don’t teach you how to do that at university. Watching my own kids in the playground I started wondering if we could do this better.”
A recent shift in the Australian Standard for playgrounds, aligning more closely to the European model, has given greater scope to Semple and his peers.
“The Europeans have a much more adventurous outlook on play,” he says. “For example, last year Australian children could only fall two-and-a-half metres. German kids could fall three. It’s enabled us to make things much more exciting.
“It’s a risk-benefit approach, rather than risk-aversion. Five years ago, playground designers were selecting playground elements from catalogues. Looking at it from an adult design perspective, you’d say ‘that looks durable, neat and tidy’. You wouldn’t question the play value. Now we use more organic elements, structures that are irregular, more challenging.”
A play space should connect with its surroundings, Semple says.
“They need a genus loci, a sense of place. We should be storytelling – historic, cultural, Indigenous, ecosystem. Unfortunately, children have become used to experiencing things through media like books, TV, computers. The emphasis has been on the exotic, like the Amazon, the Great Barrier Reef. It’s remote, it’s not relevant to them. If you approach from a local perspective, if you can focus on wildlife that’s local to them, that becomes ingrained in them, they’ll be able to understand the bigger picture.”
Even closer to home, gardening writer and TV presenter Sophie Thomson says home gardens can offer a satisfying play experience, too. Thomson has been named a Nature Play Ambassador and wants parents to make gardens better for kids.
“I’ve always been concerned about modern landscaping,” Thomson says. “A lot of people are paving the lot. Pavers and three strappy plants – that’s not a garden.”
Thomson’s idea for a garden has stepping stones, balancing logs, shade trees, woven tunnels, vegie wall garden, insect hotel, water feature and even a beehive, but she stresses that it’s not necessary to have everything.
“Just being able to get dirty is the big one,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be big or expensive. You can use these elements even in the smallest garden.”
To Sarah Sutter, the breadth of support she’s received augur well for her mission.
“We’ve got state government support, local councils are all wanting to come on board, parents and individuals are already working towards making it happen. I’m looking forward to embracing corporate partners to come along with us. It’s a great movement to be associated with, it’s touching people’s lives in a positive way.
“Think about it, where do you have the best fun? Where’s the best place to clear your head? It’s not in your office. It’s on the beach, it’s climbing Mount Lofty, it’s walking in a park. It’s the same for your kids.”
Nature Play Week is on Sept 27-Oct 4.
Nature Play’s list of 51 things your kids should do before they turn 12...
1 Climb a tree
2 Sleep under the stars (even in
your backyard)
3 Fall off a bike
4 Learn to swim
5 Build a cubby or a tree house
6 Find a geocache (geocaching.com) in your neighbourhood
7 Go beachcombing after a storm
8 Cook damper on a campfire
9 Go on a school camp in the bush
10 Catch a wave (start with a small one)
11 Play chasey in the rain
12 Catch a yabby (or have fun trying)
13 Make a water slide with builders’ plastic and a hose (do it on your watering day)
14 Find a cave
15 Make something with things you find
16 Play in a creek
17 Do something you’re scared of
18 Watch kangaroos in the wild
19 Slide down a grass hill on cardboard
20 Yell “cooeee!” in a gorge or a valley
21 Camp on a beach
22 Build a sandcastle city
23 Skim a stone
24 Plant something and watch it grow
25 Play spotlight
26 Ride your bike on a bush trail
27 Visit an island
28 Go for a two-day hike
29 Snorkel at the beach or on a reef
30 Ride a flying fox
31 Play under a sprinkler
32 Climb a big rock
33 Play in the bush for a whole day
34 Visit a waterhole
35 Meet kids in a park and invent a game
36 Paddle a kayak
37 Dig for worms in your backyard
38 Catch a crab
39 Learn the Aboriginal names for five plants and five animals
40 Visit a national park
41 Catch a fish
42 Play on a rope swing
43 Eat bush tucker
44 Make a kite and fly it
45 Jump in a muddy puddle
46 Identify the birds in your backyard
47 Go abseiling
48 Catch a tadpole (and release it)
49 Make a mud pie
50 Find a lake, puddle or pond and use a magnifying glass to spot the
living creatures swimming in it
51 Play beach cricket
Source: Nature Play SA