Right now I’m sitting at the Klein Dom playground (Little Cathedral playground).  It’s an urban park behind a gate.  We had heard from neighbors that it was here for several weeks before we actually found it–only about 100 yards from our house tucked behind the street front of row houses.  As I write, our girls are playing in the water and sand.  It is amazing, this water course contraption, with sand to build dikes, canals, and islands.  Polder play, perhaps I should call it. 

As I look around, I see Dutch kids imbibing national values effortlessly.  There are three and four wheeled cycles provided for young kids to learn to pedal and steer.  There is water to redirect with shifting levers, tubes, and piles of unruly sand.  True, it’s not all cycles and water management; there are also an inset trampoline, requisite swings and climbing structures, and a small field hockey court provided with sticks.   This public playground employs an attendant at least a few hours per day to gather up the cycles and equipment into the playhouse a half hour before closing.  It’s a large space, which makes our inability to find it all the funnier.

Watching the girls elbow deep in drippy sludge, I’m reminded of a conversation with my sister over dinner one night in Atlanta.  The elementary school that her kids attended was about to renovate their playground, and they had hired a nature consultant.

“Kids need to pick lots of little things up, to pile and sort them, to build things, not just to swing on a jungle gym and run around on a flat, grass field.  They need to play in the woods.  Trinity is trying to make their playground more nature-play-friendly,” I recall her saying, referencing the research in the book, Last Child in the Woods.

This playground certainly meets the gold standard of interactivity: kids are nudged to dig, to pile, to design, to learn about gravity, force, and trajectory.  But…it is dirty. 

Maybe this is too dirty for a school playground.  I can imagine the amount of sand that would be tracked into classrooms if, day after day, the children were playing in this sand and water after lunch.  They would certainly have to have outside boots and indoor shoes.

When I read this to Margaret, she said, “It would fit well at Stepping Stones Montessori.  Kids there like to play in the woods and build stuff.  Students do wear outside shoes on the playground and get messy.  Except on ‘pajama day’ some of the girls wore frilly nightgowns.”

“Like Fancy Nancy did?” I replied.

“Yea, and they had to be more careful, but they did like to play on the jungle gym.”

Maybe I could see it at Stepping Stones.  It might be a paradigm shift for some parents in Atlanta, though.  A few springs ago, we were staying with my parents over Easter.  Caroline was, as usual, unwilling to stay at Sunday school by herself.  So I was outside on a glorious morning in the First Presbyterian playground, where the preschoolers were able to go after they had heard a story, sung a song, colored pictures and eaten snacks.  These kids were in their Easter best–tiny guys in seersucker suits and girls in white dresses with ruffles.  And they were playing in the sandbox.  I wondered how all of that sand was going to go over.  Maybe parents learn to handle that balance. 

There is a time for sand, and a time for soap.