Adventures in Risky Play: What is Your Yes?

Adventures in Risky Play: What is Your Yes? goes to the heart of risk-taking and children. As educators working with young children, we all have boundaries and feelings around what risky play is allowed. Rusty Keeler invites us to examine the cage of boundaries that we have created for ourselves and our children. He challenges us to rattle our cage and discover where the lines are movable. In our role as educators and caretakers, when we allow children to play and confront risk on their own terms, we see them develop, hold their locus of control and make choices on how to navigate the bumpy terrain of a situation.

The book is arranged in 5 sections:

• Play Manifesto: What is the value of play in a child’s life? And what is important about risk taking?
• Ways to Support Risky Play: An educator’s role is a play supporter.
• Provacatives: An in-depth look at activities children absolutely need to be doing but that somewhere along the line adults deemed too risky and eliminated.
• Program Tour: A tour of “best practice” examples from around the world of risk taking including: childcare centers, forest schools, adventure playgrounds, and elementary schools.
• Extra Stuff: Resources, lists, and templates

Paperback. 296 pages