Featured
Articles
The Beauty of Dens
Posted by
Kathy Brodie on June 19, 2015.
I love dens. Always have – as a child I would spend hours in the garden with my brother and sister, collecting large branches, reeds, planks of wood – anything to make a den with.
I think the joy was being able to create something from nothing. (I also suspect that I had an enclosure schema going on. Even now I like to sit in the corner of a café, tidy things into boxes and prefer grids to mind maps).
Of course, once you have an enclosed areas such as a den, you can invite others in – or shut them out. The element of self-choice can be very important to children. Sometimes even well meant adult intervention can be disruptive or even destructive to children’s play.
This book will challenge any preconceptions about the innocence and universal benefit of play. It is based on naturalistic observations of children, where researchers do not interrupt or disturb the play, so the ‘real’ situation can be witnessed.The result is a number of fascinating, and sometimes disturbing, vignettes of play behaviour.