Posted on 05/05/2012 6:40:03 AM PDT by Squawk 8888
At first, parents fretted about the rocky hillside.
It screamed danger to some who gathered at a town hall about Lord Selkirk School’s new playground plans three and a half years ago. What if the children were running over the hill, didn’t see the rocks and tumbled down, scraping their knees and elbows or worse?
Stormie Duchnycz, principal of the Winnipeg school, and the landscape designer who was working on the plans carefully explained its hidden virtues: The rocky hill would help expose their children to nature, it would be physically challenging and engage the whole of their little bodies. Kids would be aware of their surroundings, but their imaginations would also run wild as they incorporate the rocks into their play.
Knowing full well the negative side effects of too much sitting time and too little stimulation (read: obesity and boredom), parents warmed to the idea and the rocky hill was built. (The school promised to ramp up supervision, casting more adult eyes on the rocky hill and also the “wiggle wall” made from one-to-two-foot-tall stumps that acts as a kind of balance beam, Ms. Duchnycz said.)
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalpost.com ...
LOL...you have to go to the photo to see how pathetic Canada has become. That these smooth stones should be considered by any nanny stater as “dangerous” for pre-teen children is ridiculous. Real children seem to seek out much more dangerous pursuits than this.
Just spent most of the last week in Canada. VERY nice people; Vancouver is gorgeous. Clean.
...but omg what a bunch of wimps. Don’t get me started....
We meet with large groups of home schoolers where the eleven year old boys, are you ready for this, carry pocket knives. They go to the state park and play “Capture the Flag” out in the open woods. The children get knees scraped and bumps and bruises.
Have you lost your effin' mind? Move it! You're blockin' the view.
Free-range children?!? Oh, the humanity.....
I am so thankful I grew up in a time when mothers said, “Get out of the house and don’t come back until the streetlights come on!”
They make it sound like children playing on the side of a cliff like El Capitan. LOL
My grandfather told me stories when he was a kid in New York City playing stickball in the streets dodging cars and such.
My daughter lives in Vancouver. She’s out about every weekend backcountry snowshoeing, skiing Whistler, hiking the local parks, going up the the Joffre Lakes, going to Tofino on Vancouver Island, mountain biking just north of the city, kayaking on the Sound. You can’t keep her and her friends inside. All the young adults she hangs out with live similar lives...not sure where you saw the wimps.
Isn’t this stupid? I don’t know how I survived my youth.
Were it not for the damn lawyers and gold digging parents and the hover round parents this would not be a problem.
When I was a kid we’d play at dodging arrows. We’d play “King of the mountain” and it was rough. We’d climb trees, dive into water holes, and slide down cliffs. I can’t recall any of us getting really hurt beyond the usual scrapes and bruises. But we sure had fun...
That evokes a fond memory for me. In the early to mid-60’s, we used to go to this vacant lot, a ravine of sorts a few blocks away from my street, that we would climb for hours, traversing it by holding on to various tree roots and branches, looking for the next footing, and and also climbing up and down it. We were in the wilderness searching for civilization! Sometimes we were escaping from the bad guys. We would stand on the ridge and try to figure how we’d get to the other side by going around the sides of it. That lot was all dirt and rocks and roots and trees but it was the coolest.
I don’t think I remember a week of my childhood without scabs on my knees or elbows. No broken bones and none of this “safety crap”. Just learning how to live.
Was so proud of my 18 month old, she got her first skinned knee yesterday running in the yard! No skinned knees, no adventures!
We had six kids in our family, and my mother would dress us up in snowsuits and make us play outside all day. I remember standing under the kitchen window pleading to come in, and her face would appear telling us to stay out and play!
Hahaha...I still bear the scars on the inside and outside of each elbow, courtesy of a skateboard I created by stealing my sister’s metal rolling skate, taking it apart and nailing each end to the front and back of a board.
LOL...learning bad engineering at a young age!
Same here, but it was 98 degrees with the full Florida sun, and she’d tell us to drink from the hose and she’ll make us a pitcher of Kool-Aid when she finishes vacuuming.
Kool-Aid...with a cup of SUGAR! But we weren’t obese. Oh yeah!
In Canada, we played hockey in the middle of the street. All hell broke loose here in Toronto when city council tried to ban it.
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