According to the CDC, about 1 in 44 children has autism. This number has been on the rise over the years, and it’s estimated that over 3.5 million people in the United States now live with an autism spectrum disorder.

This course explores autism and its implications for families going to a playground. You’ll learn what autism is and how it impacts those born with it. You’ll also discover 10 specific playground strategies you can employ to help address the needs of children with autism in a design that works for neuro-typically developing kids, too.

Upon completing this course you’ll be able to:

• Define autism and what it means for families going to playgrounds.
• Explain how different playground equipment stimulates the sensory systems.
• Discuss how playground layout can impact a child’s experience.
• Utilize a 10-step checklist to ensure a playground is designed to support a child with an autism spectrum disorder.

Families are most interested in visiting playgrounds that provide activities for all of their children. A majority of playgrounds are designed for 5–12-year-olds or 2-12-year-olds. A demographic that is often left out is infants and toddlers. Yet, this age group greatly benefits from outdoor play. They can experience unique sensory experiences that do not occur inside. Being outside provides time for young children to use all their gross motor skills. In addition, to physical play, outdoor play supports a child’s full development. In this workshop, we will explore the childhood milestones for this age group and identify playground equipment that can support child development. Using Head Start’s Infant and Toddler’s Outdoor Play Space Assessment, we will discover the best way to create a play area specifically designed for infants and toddlers, whether they are in a school, daycare, or public park setting.

Upon completing this course you’ll be able to:

• Explain the need for an infant and toddler playground
• Identify equipment that matches the child development needs of young children
• Utilize an Outdoor Play Space Assessment to determine how to improve existing play spaces or design new spaces

Never before have human beings been so sedentary, nor spent so much time indoors. One obstacle to being outdoors is sun exposure – healthy in small doses but dangerous in large ones. This course offers shade creation techniques for designers, landscape architects, urban planners and park and recreation professionals. Tensile fabric structures elevate the value of outdoor space to a high degree. They can be purely functional or wildly imaginative. The designer’s imagination is the key. This course discusses the value of tensile fabric structures and the variety of applications for this exciting form of architecture. The factors that make up tensile fabric structures are discussed, including framing, fabric, connections, and foundations. The process of bringing a fabric structure from idea to implementation is thoroughly discussed. And case studies are inserted throughout to show these innovative structures in action.

Upon completing this course you’ll be able to:

• Discuss the protective benefits of outdoor shade for people, products, and places.
• Describe factors for integrating fabric structures into the built environment.
• Define considerations for the specification of fabric shade structures that are tested and rated for safety and longevity.
• Identify the process for designing and implementing a quality shade structure.

All children deserve to grow, play, and thrive in a safe environment. Unfortunately, the society within which we all live is filled with places, conditions, emotional stresses, and even pandemics like Covid 19, that attack our safe places. Children who have experienced trauma and toxic stress require sensitively designed play/recreational environments to minimize the impacts of the attacks from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Trauma-informed design is an emerging field focused on supporting the environmental and psychological needs of trauma victims and survivors. The presentation in this course will focus on the aspects of design that can help this demographic thrive despite the challenges they face.

Upon completing this course you’ll be able to:

• Describe the breadth, nature, and impact of trauma on children in our current society.
• Discuss trauma-informed principles for outdoor play/recreation space design that help combat and minimize negative impacts of trauma.
• Show real world examples of design that supports physical, psychological, cognitive, and social development for children who have or are experiencing trauma.

Kids Cove—a beloved community playground in Marquette, Michigan—showed clear signs of deterioration after two generations of service. A group of volunteers identified the need for a new inclusive playground, and the city agreed to support the initiative if the volunteers would lead the fundraising and planning. In less than 20 months, the group was able to hire a landscape architecture team, rally the community around the initiative, create a playground design with input from constituency groups, and raise over a million dollars for the project. How did they do it? In this course, Mara Kaplan will interview three community members to learn how a team of volunteers was able to accomplish what they did, how they used crowdfunding to finish their campaign, and how a strong partnership between a landscape architecture team and the volunteers was crucial to the success of the project.

Upon completing this course you’ll be able to:

• Describe how an architecture team can help the community solicit input from different constituency groups.
• Understand the pros and cons of undertaking a project in a small community with a 26% poverty rate.
• Identify apps, programs, and ideas that can assist in getting the community involved in the project.

What does it take to create an extraordinary playground?  What strategies should you put into place so your new playground is visited by families from the neighborhood and from the next county over? In this course, we’ll highlight a variety of built play spaces.  We’ll see how playgrounds fit into bigger settings, how theming makes a statement, and how surfacing or even one or two pieces of unique equipment can make a playground extraordinary. We’ll also discover why multi-generational and/or inclusive playgrounds draw families from far and wide.

Upon completing this course you’ll be able to:

• Discuss how water play, height, and unique equipment can help create an extraordinary playground.
• Identify small details that can turn an ordinary playground into an extraordinary one.
• Explain how playgrounds that reach the widest audience can often be extraordinary ones.