After collecting all of our ideas we hired Jon Adams-Kollitz and Danielle Allen,from Stratiform Landworks, to create a working plan. Jon and Danielle were excited about working with us and they donated many hours of their time to host interactive design charettes with parents, children and staff. The understood that the planning of the playground was as important to us as the end result. The playground will be a reflection of our connection to the world we are exploring, the people we know and love, and the rituals we are creating together. We wanted a design process that allowed us to deepen our understanding of these values.
For our designs we used natural materials, found objects, and lots blocks from Learning Materials Workshop, an excellent source of blocks and learning tools right across the street from our school. Karen Hewitt, the owner of LMW , has been working on many projects at BCS involving researching new toys she is designing and studying the ways children are using blocs to understand the world. Karen Even held a design session for teachers where we created playgrounds for spiders, snakes, and bugs.
We took all of our ideas and created models of our dream playground. Jon and Danielle built a model of the school that we could add to and manipulate. We documented these planning sessions, took notes about the ideas we liked the most, and told a lot of stories about what we would do there some day.
