Up on Play: Childcare by Landscape Structures

Up on Play

Childcare Issue 1

The building blocks of play

or more than 40 years, Landscape Structures has been committed to creating developmentally appropriate inclusive play experiences. Our original structures were designed in partnership with the early childhood development center at Iowa State University. Since then, we have designed and installed thousands of play spaces incorporating developmental standards put forth by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and safety standards defined by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM).

Our PlayShaper®, Weevos® and PlaySense® playsystems support physical and cognitive development by following standard learning curricula for infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Of course, they’re also proportioned for their smaller hands and feet to encourage the youngest playground adventurers to become independent, inquisitive learners. Our playsystems encourage imaginative play, and help kids build strength,

flexibility, balance and dexterity—all while meeting the unique safety needs of these age groups. In addition to playsystems, we offer freestanding play components—activity panels, spinners, tunnels and more— that add fun and more sensory-rich play experiences for kids ages 2 to 5. We also have shade and site furnishings to help you put the finishing touches on your play environment—and some are sized just for kids! All of our offerings can be tailored to best meet your space and budget requirements. Your total cost of ownership will be minimized while we maximize the play experience for kids. Get more information about our Early Childhood product offerings, brilliant color palettes and childcare-specific resources at playlsi.com. When you’re ready to get started on a project, contact your local playground consultant.

Nature-inspired playgrounds influencing child development Many of today’s children and families often have limited opportunities to spend time outside connecting with nature. Children spend more time inside watching T.V., playing video games and browsing the Internet than they do being active outside. All of this inactivity is leading to childhood obesity, and other health and development concerns. In the past few years, we’ve noticed an increase in childcare facilities focused on nature-inspired activities and nature-themed playground equipment. That may be a result of numerous research studies and articles documenting the benefits of connecting children to nature including improvements in their social, psychological, academic and physical development. “Our Center chose to incorporate a nature-inspired playground in order to fit in with the surrounding landscape,” explained Betty Soine, early childhood supervisor at the Early Childhood Family Center in Stillwater, Minn. “Also, research supports the value of using natural environments to encourage children’s overall growth and development. Our parent education program encourages parents to get outside with children during all seasons to experience the variety of outdoor environments, breathe the fresh air and explore the wonders of nature through the eyes of their child. An outdoor play environment that mimics nature supports a health and wellness focus for all our families and staff.” The Early Childhood Family Center incorporated a nature-inspired playground designed for kids ages 6 to 23 months. The Infant Single Poly Slide, Infant Balance Bar and Chimes Panel provide the right amount of sensory stimulation, balance, coordination and strength challenges. Additionally, a play space for kids ages 2 to 5 has realistic bark, wood and rock textures, natural colors and discovery items like chipmunks, worms and insects built into the Log Stack Climber, Log Steppers and Recycled Tree House Roofs. “Equipment was chosen with children of all abilities in mind,” said Betty. “A team of professionals on our staff studied and selected the types of equipment that could support building strength, mobility and cognitive skills for all children through interactive outdoor play. The children are engaged in all types of movement and activities everyday that encourage and support physical, social and emotional, language and cognitive development. Our nature-inspired playground does exactly what we envisioned and more!” In addition to nature-inspired playground equipment, the Early Childhood Family Center incorporated site furnishings from the nature-inspired collection including the Acorn Seats, Wood-Grain Bench, and Trash and Litter Receptacles. By incorporating matching site furnishings, they were able to create an entire nature-inspired environment for the Center. See more photos of the Early Childhood Family Center here. Learn more about our nature-inspired playground equipment, then contact your local Landscape Structures playground consultant to get started on your next project.

Leave it to the professionals Landscape Structures is so honored to work with childcare facilities around the world. We’re constantly learning about fun and unique projects on which you’ve worked, obstacles that you face and innovative solutions that you create to overcome challenges. That’s why we’ve created this new feature that spotlights a professional, introduces him or her, and gives you a glimpse into what projects and programs he or she has implemented. Our first featured professional is Dr. Lucy Jane Miller, founder of the Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) Foundation and the STAR Center. Read below to learn more about Dr. Miller, and her experience in working with children.

Q: How did you begin your career, and how did it lead you to start the SPD Foundation? A: When I was 16-years-old, I stopped seeing things the way other people do. Literally. Without contact lenses in my eyes, objects were growing blurrier and blurrier. With contacts in, I could see but my eyes ached until, after several hours, I could hardly bear the pain. Only a few months earlier, I’d been thinking about where to go to college, what to do for the summer and all the other things typical 16-year-old girls think about. Then this one big sensory piece started to fail—my sense of sight—and my whole world shifted. My parents took me to a local ophthalmologist but he brushed aside my complaints. “There’s nothing the matter with her eyes,” he told us. “It’s all in her head.” I was in college before we solved the mystery of my fading vision. By then, wearing contact lenses for more than a few minutes had become agony and even enormous shapes were fuzzy without them. It was my alarmed freshman roommate who insisted I see a doctor at the school clinic, triggering a series of referrals that finally brought answers and help. I was diagnosed with advanced kerateconus, a disease that distorts the corneas and— without treatment—eventually, leads to blindness. The diagnosis was grave but it also came as a relief. My vision problems weren’t all in my head after all! The symptoms were real and they had a name. I finally knew what I was fighting and could make a plan for fighting it. The year was 1971 and the cure for the disease was corneal transplants in both eyes, a procedure only two doctors in the U.S. were qualified to perform. I went on a waiting list for donor corneas, doubling up on classes so I could finish college before my surgery, learning Braille and practicing with a white cane, just in case the cure didn’t work and I lost what was left of my eyesight. A few weeks before graduation, I reached the top of the list for my first transplant. During the two-hour surgery, the old bad right cornea was removed and a new donated cornea was stitched to my eyeball with 16 sutures that would jab my eye and eyelid like teensy relentless needles for the three months after surgery when both my eyes had to be patched. The operation was a total success, but I felt lost in my carefully maintained darkness. The endless stream of doctors, fellows, residents and medical students who gazed admiringly at my eye murmured, “beautiful, beautiful,” but I didn’t feel beautiful at all. I couldn’t see. I made a mess when I tried to eat. I couldn’t perform basic personal hygiene tasks and, after a lifetime of seeing people when I talked, it didn’t feel like communication when I talked in the dark. What’s more, the admiring medical people who visited seemed to care only about my beautiful new eye. I felt reduced to a single sensory organ—an eyeball. Then a new person entered my life. She was a young occupational therapy student doing her internship and she had been assigned to teach me how to feed, dress and take care of myself. She was about my age and showed no interest in my eyeball at all. Instead, she talked to me, Lucy Jane Miller, and listened to what I said. She always wanted to know how I—not my eye—was doing and she told me little things about her life so we had a real relationship even though I couldn’t see her. I silently called her “Angel” and imagined her with long blonde hair, blue eyes, a perfect Olympian body, and a halo, of course. I learned to identify her footsteps and detect her scent so I could say, “Hi, Angel!” just as she came into my room. Then came the day when Angel chanced into the room when my patches were being changed and I finally glimpsed my rescuer with my eyes as well as with my other senses. The sight astonished me. Angel was a polio survivor. Half her face and body had been paralyzed and left sagging by the disease. In my darkness, Angel was beautiful because I could only “see” the beauty that was inside. In the fog of recuperation, my future came into focus. While still in my eye patches, I applied to occupational therapy school. Two days after the last stitches were removed following my second transplant, I started graduate school.

One of the first books I read with my new good eyes was the work of a pioneering occupational therapist and neuroscientist named A. Jean Ayres. In Sensory Integration and Learning Disabilities, Dr. Ayres wrote in detail about the behavioral, social and emotional issues that arise when a child’s sensory foundation is not firmly established early in life. She stressed the importance of early diagnosis of sensory disorders and described in detail how occupational therapy (OT) could and was helping children. Fresh as I was from my own darkness, Dr. Ayres’ words resonated instantly. Demoralized and disabled by the long-term repercussions of a doctor’s proclamation that my symptoms were all in my head, I knew how critical accurate and early diagnosis was. Barely out of my teens, I had known the humiliation of being unable to perform normal, everyday routines like other people my age. Grateful for Angel’s care, I was a firm believer in how dramatically OT could address sensory issues and improve a person’s life. Before first semester ended, I decided to spend my life promoting the understanding, accurate diagnosis and effective treatment of the sensory-based disorders that Dr. Ayres described. From Sensational Kids: Hope and Help for Children with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) Q: What have been some of your greatest achievements in your career? A: I’m excited to be able to help individuals with SPD in a variety of ways including research, education and working directly with patients and their families. Below are a few achievements of which I am most proud: • Listening to families who have children with SPD, and helping them to believe in themselves and their intuitions about their children. • Getting funding for and conducting a randomized controlled trial showing the effectiveness of OT with children who have SPD (Miller, Coll, Schoen, 2007). • Envisioning and pulling together the SPD Scientific Work Group, a multidisciplinary translational group of 49 scientists, to study SPD. The SPD Scientific Work Group represents human and animal research (epidemiology, genetics, neuroimaging, multi-sensory integration, phenotype expression, and much more). Scientists are from Harvard, Yale, Duke, U WI-Madison, UCA at San Francisco and many more universities. • Developing nine norm-referenced standardized scales so that children with developmental differences can be tested on reliable, valid, and FUN tests that demonstrate their strengths. The scales include the following: o Miller Assessment for Preschoolers (1982,1988) o FirstSTEp™ (Screening Test for Evaluating Preschoolers) (1993) o Toddler and Infant Motor Evaluation (1994) o Leiter International Performance Scale – Revised (1997) o Short Sensory Profile (1999) o Primer PASO (2003) o Japanese Miller Assessment for Preschoolers (1989) o Miller Function and Participation Scale (2006) o Goal-Oriented Assessment of LifeSkills (2013)

Q: As the face of the SPD Foundation, you travel around the world to speak to the professional community. What do you enjoy most about this? A: I love mentoring and teaching parents and professionals from all fields. The information “out there” tends to be old—based on models of assessment and treatment developed decades ago. It is fun to see people’s expressions when I talk about the underlying principles of treatment related to arousal regulation and relationship/attunement. It is wonderful to explain our new treatment model (intensive, e.g. every day for 30 sessions) with so much parent education and coaching (about 20 percent of sessions are parents only) and much more. It is fun teaching people to use their reasoning abilities and to think outside the box! Q: You’re a very busy person, but outside of work what are some of your personal hobbies? A: I love to quilt, embroider, camp, go white water rafting, and most of all to spend quality time with my two talented daughters, my husband, my two dogs and my extended family. Learn more about Dr. Miller, the SPD Foundation and the STAR Center by visiting spdfoundation.net and spdstar.org.

Industry News Read about the latest happenings affecting early childhood professionals, and then join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+. Let us know what you think about the following topics: • Arne Duncan makes pitch to expand early-childhood education U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says he thinks the time has come for a sweeping expansion of early-childhood education programs, like the one that President Barack Obama outlined in his State of the Union speech. See the details of the administration’s early-childhood education expansion in its most recent budget request to Congress.

Calendar of Events Looking forward to seeing you at the following events: June • Kiwanis, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada July • NAESP Convention, Baltimore, Md. • AOTA Specialty Schools Conference, Minneapolis, Minn.

• How to plan a sensory diet for your child Kids learn through their senses, which is why it’s important to create a personalized activity plan that offers the “just-right” sensory input to keep them focused and organized throughout the day. Learn how to create a sensory diet for the children in your life.

October • SPD Foundation, Charlotte, N.C. • NRPA, Houston, Texas November • National League of Cities, Seattle, Wash. • ASLA, Boston, Mass.

Landscape Structures Inc. 601 7th St. South Delano, MN 55328-8605 888.438.6574 763.972.5200 playlsi.com

• A decline in play leads to increased anxiety and depression According to Peter Gray, professor of psychology at Boston College, children’s free play has been continually declining since about 1955 due to adults taking ever-increasing control over children’s activities. And with the decrease in outdoor play, children are lacking emotional development, which can lead to a rise in anxiety, depression and issues of attention and self-control. Read more.