On Monday, January 21st the children of École James S. McCormick School began the first of three seasonal training opportunities involving the formation of their natural playground.

The natural playground is being designed by Christmas trees that were donated by the general public. The kids will use the trees to build a fort out of natural materials. In the first session, the students used handsaws under supervision to remove branches from the former Christmas trees to create long wooden poles to help support and form the fort.

“They are perfect, natural, loose parts for these kids to learn skills, and to be physically active while they are learning skills, and doing school curriculum,” said Adam Bienenstock, Founder and Principal Designer of Bienenstock Natural Playgrounds.

Encouraging play from natural objects inspires a love of nature, teamwork, collaboration and is a great physical activity in itself. The students will also learn technical skills such as handling a hand saw, and the physics, science, engineering, and art behind building a fort.

“They think the point of this is to build a fort. The point is that they have a connection to nature so that they understand the value of this as a resource. They are much more active learners when they are physically active outside. Learning isn’t just in a classroom in front of a smartboard,” added Bienenstock.

“I’ve seen a lot of cooperation between students that don’t always get paired together or choose to be paired together. I am really pleased that they are figuring out ways to get along and get a job done with a specific task. I love the creativity of it and just being outside,” said Amie Reid, a teacher at École James S. McCormick School.

Students Kayson Webber and Tyson Tolsma said that they were learning, “how to build stuff and how to cut properly without cutting your hands off,” they said they’re favorite thing was “Getting to sit on the tree,” and “not cutting your hands off.”

Student, Vienna Wilzen was excited to find a bird’s nest in one of the trees saying, “I was digging through the branches and then that thing showed up. I didn’t even notice it was there, literally. Sadly, there are no eggs though. I would love to keep one that would be amazing.”

Wilzen’s teacher, Amie Reid was also happy to find the nest for teaching purposes adding, “We learn about life cycles in grade three so we’re going to keep this in our classroom. When we start learning about life cycles, we can think about the bird life cycle.”

The natural playground will be an evolving project and will be expected to change as the kids play with it and restructure it. The fort will also evolve naturally as time goes on and the wood weathers.

However, the experience is not just a learning opportunity for the students and teachers of École James S. McCormick School. Dr. Svrcek from the University of Calgary will be monitoring all three sessions and measuring the impact of the project throughout the year.