In academia we talk about the affordances offered by different play spaces.

What this means is that different play spaces offer children different kinds of play opportunities.

Think about a swing.

Certainly a swing can provide opportunities for movement, experiencing the sensation of flying through the air.

It may offer opportunities for climbing, socialisation and language (pushing your friend, organising taking turns) and it may offer opportunities for imagination (pretending you are a bird as you soar through the air).

Playing with blocks offers different opportunities.

Blocks offer a range of fine motor skill practice – piling one block on top of another – and a range of spatial understandings (linked to geometry for example) – what is the best base to put at the bottom of a huge tower?

How do we balance blocks to make the span of a bridge?

How might we make a pitched roof for the house we have built? 

Many of the toys we have available for children (and probably some that children received at Christmas) have limited affordances.

In other words these are toys that have a right way and a wrong way to use them.

For example I have seen children, working with a construction set designed to build a bus, refuse to use the pieces for anything other than the bus.

This limitation means that the blocks only have limited affordance, they do not encourage children to use their imagination and dream, rather they require children to follow instructions to produce the pre-determined outcome: a bus that looks like this and only like this.

We want play spaces and play equipment that maximise children’s imaginations as well as provide a range of different learning opportunities.

Outdoor play spaces can perform that function if we are thoughtful in how they are set up.

Rather than a set of swings and a slide, the standard outdoor play equipment, we could provide a grassy hill (even a pile of dirt), some trees and bushes.

Or perhaps stones and pebbles under a small bridge, ropes to walk along and swing from and plenty of opportunities to explore, to experiment and to get dirty.

Ideal outdoor play spaces do not need formal equipment.

We can encourage children to explore the leaves fallen onto the ground, the creatures hiding in the dirt, and support imagination that sees possibilities in the way the wind blows the grass and the tiny circle of flowering weeds.

Play spaces and play equipment that provides the best affordances are unstructured and open to being used in many different ways, only limited by our imagination.

Let’s support children’s imagination these summer holidays.