Playwork – Letting Children Take the Lead

Playwork is a unique approach, developed alongside adventure playgrounds in the U.K., to create and maintain spaces for unstructured, child-directed play. It has now become popular across the U.K., the U.S. and Canada. Dr. Rhea brings on playworker and risky-play advocate, Jill Wood, to share the principles of Playwork and what drew her to this approach in schools and after school programs. Jill Wood is founding director of Adventure Play at The Parish School, an outdoor, child-directed after school program in Houston Texas. It is one of only a handful of adventure playgrounds in the United States and the only one based at a school for children with speech and language delays. Jill is founder of Bayou City Play, a group of educators and therapists, who partner with organizations to improve play opportunities in the Houston metro area, and she provides training as a regional consultant for UK-based Pop-Up Adventure Play. She is mom to an amazing 10-year-old, who is the real expert on play in our household. Resoures mentioned in this episode: Play Wales - https://play.wales/playwork/ Pop-up Adventure Play - https://www.popupadventureplay.org/ Bayou City Play - https://www.bayoucityplay.com/ The Playwork Principles - https://playwork.foundation/the-playwork-principles/ The Playwork Primer: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED511455.pdf Play Street Initiative - https://londonplaystreets.org.uk/