Physical Education – Page 2 – Montessori Muddle

Real Play, and the ideal playground

Jungle play area at the Skudeneshavn Primary School in Karmøy on the west coast of Norway.

What I really like about the Skudeneshavn Primary School playground in Karmøy, Norway is the sheer variety of things available for the students to do (hat tip to Mary Cour). I also like the philosophy. Asbjørn Flemmen’s research on the social and motor skills benefits of play, true children’s play, is the key guiding principle behind the design of the playground. His philosophy is that:

Real play is a spontaneous and social activity, dependent upon its environment, where interaction takes place through extensive use of gross-motor movement. – Flemmen (2009)

Because it is spontaneous, real play is also intrinsically driven, coming from children’s innate motivation. Flemmen view of the role of grown-up’s is the same as Montessori’s, to direct the environment. He draws a clear distinction between the real play of children’s culture and the competitive sports that typify adult culture (Flemmen, 2009), where behavior is directed by the adults.

The Skudeneshavn playground embodies these principles by providing a variety of opportunity to challenge all skill levels and interests, and having materials that attract the interest of their students. Indeed, to stimulate interest, a key part of the playground design is to have “activities the children can not yet master and do not dare to do so”.

17b — Jungle area. Students have the opportunity to take risks.

Real play also needs an environment that stimulates social interaction (again very Montessori), and Flemmen’s approach to conflict resolution is the let the kids sort it out. This is somewhat controversial, especially when you consider the possibility of bullying, yet there is some evidence that this approach works. The variety of the activities available make it so that the children are seldom bored.

Flemmen has an interesting chapter in the book, “Several Perspectives on Children’s Play: Scientific Reflections for Practitioners” (Chapter 11). I also find his table comparing children’s play to adult sports to be a very useful template for considering how to organize physical education.

Circadian rhythms and a nature deficit

I remain fascinated by the Brazilian study that found that kids living in homes without electricity did not have the same sleep deprivation issues as those with electricity. I thought of it again recently when I ran across the term “nature-deficit disorder” in Oak Hill Montessori school’s newsletter.

Unstructured nature time is so important because children live through their senses. When they are right there in the forest, they are getting a primary multi-sensory experience of nature as opposed to the secondary, often distorted, dual-sensory view presented by TV. – Daniels, 2009 (p. 4)

The idea of nature-deficit disorder comes from the book “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv. Written in 2005 and updated in 2008 with a bunch of practical things you can do to change things, Louv’s book advocates for more time in nature because, “a growing body of research links our mental, physical, and spiritual health directly to our association with nature.” Not only does it affect our individual health, but directly experiencing nature also helps increase environmental awareness (which ties into the Montessori peace curriculum). Louv argues that children have a fundamental right to walk in the woods:

Science sheds light on the measurable consequences of introducing children to nature; studies pointing to health and cognition benefits are immediate and concrete. We also need to articulate the underlying “first principle”—one that emerges not only from what science can prove, but also from what it cannot fully reveal; one that resists codification because it is so elemental: a meaningful connection to the natural world is fundamental to our survival and spirit, as individuals and as a species. Louv (2009)

I can’t say I disagree very much with this diagnosis. My adolescents are too often opting for technology rather than being outside, especially if it’s in nature. This is one reason my students are building the nature trail. The trail has been coming along slowly though, but the seasons are changing and we’ll spend more time outside in the warmer weather. The timing is also nice because we’ve just finished covering simple machines in physics. There are logs and junk to be moved and saplings to be cleared.

Note: Louv has a long list of links to print and broadcast articles on the whole “nature-deficit disorder” concept.

Leadership and competitive games

“Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat him as he could be, and he will become what he should be.”
–Jimmy Johnson

As much as I want to offer my students near-autonomy for at least a small part of the day, I am finding it necessary to reinforce the lessons of the classroom during PE. Physical education is an important part of a holistic education not just for the fact that healthy bodies lead to healthy minds, but because it offers another domain for students to develop their leadership skills.

I’ve found that not everyone who is great in the classroom will be great on the playing field, so students who are often learning from their peers when they’re inside, get a chance to teach and lead others. Often however, because they are unused to it, they need a little guidance to recognize the reversal of roles.

It is also interesting to note that some students who are great at peer-teaching the academics can get really riled up on the field and loose all sense of perspective, forgetting those carefully taught collaboration skills. This is particularly true when we play competitive games and they have to balance competition and collaboration. Fortunately, there is a well established term (even if not gender neutral) that sums up appropriate behavior in competition, sportsmanship.