As summer ends, outside exploration is just beginning

After Summer: Guard the Space for Unstructured Play

The dog days of summer have passed, and the streets are quiet while children are back in school. Between classes, homework, and the extra lessons and practices that crowd modern calendars, unstructured outdoor time has been pushed to the back seat. Yet that free, loosely supervised space—the make-believe, the sword fights with sticks, the neighborhood negotiations—isn’t a luxury. It’s where kids reset, learn their own limits, and practice the social work of childhood.

Many schools offer little or inconsistent recess with the misguided belief that test scores demand it, so there’s no dependable moment to “let the pressure out.” That doesn’t mean the next nine months are spoken for. It just means we have to protect something small and simple at home.

A short story worth remembering

In the 1930s and ’40s, the Danish landscape architect C. Th. Sørensen noticed that children often ignored the polished playgrounds adults built and gravitated instead to the messy edges—construction sites, vacant lots, places where they could move things, argue, build, and try again. During the war, that observation became a real place in Copenhagen: the first planned “junk” or adventure playground at Emdrup in 1943. Adults didn’t choreograph the play; they guarded the space and the time so children could invent. The idea soon traveled. After visiting Copenhagen, Lady Allen of Hurtwood championed similar spaces in post-war London, where children rebuilt small worlds from the rubble. Learn more about this fascinating story here: the Emdrup playground (1943).

At it's core our challenge today doesn't looks so different—while we are fortunate to have no bombed-out lots, plenty of shiny distractions exist like screens, gadgets, apps, and over-programmed schedules. What kids really need is not an itinerary and it's certainly not more screen time. What kids need is down time. So what can we do? Hold a little piece of the day open and resist the urge to program it. Step outside with them, then step back. Let the season, the light, and their own ideas do the work. The habit matters more than the plan. If we guard that small, unstructured outside, they’ll fill it—differently and beautifully—every time.

— Oakiwear