Bison's Bluff, new playground in Schaumburg, promotes unstructured play

Climb. Explore. Create. Imagine.

As unstructured play opportunities fade in an era of screen time and schedules, Schaumburg Park District is working to ensure they don't disappear for good. That's the idea behind Bison's Bluff Nature Playground, a new play concept at Spring Valley Nature Center, 1111 E. Schaumburg Road.

Set to officially open Saturday, Bison's Bluff includes climbing structures and towers, a meandering shallow stream, a beaver lodge and an area for rock and mineral exploration.

Nature playgrounds similar to Bison's Bluff have long been popular in Europe, said Spring Valley Manager Dave Brooks. They offer a throwback to the empty lots, creeks and overgrown fields where previous generations of children spent endless hours engaged in adventure and discovery.

"Those places were like jungles and wildernesses for kids," Brooks said. "Bison's Bluff is an attempt to bring that back in a more controlled environment and reintroduce kids to the wonders and magic of open-ended play."

The site boasts an artistic area where children can create with mud and sand or weave with natural materials and a musical space for creating sounds with wood and metal percussion instruments. Celebrating its namesake, an impressive bluff resembling a rock outcrop features a large bison and slides leading to the base of the bluff.

Upon first entering Bison's Bluff, parents might be tempted to start organizing activities for their children, Brooks said. His answer: don't.

"Let your kids do whatever they're capable of doing and whatever their imaginations are capable of coming up with," he said. "Some kids will want to be very active and some will be more passive. Some kids are going to look for a quiet place to sit and imagine and others are going to be jumping around. There's no right or wrong way to play at Bison's Bluff."

Unstructured, open-ended play experiences provided by nature playgrounds like Bison's Bluff offer numerous developmental benefits. Play is a critical component to children's cognitive, physical, social and emotional well-being, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"It's healthy for children to be outside finding ways to use nature that are different from what we might imagine as adults," said Spring Valley Education Coordinator Mary Rice. "We also know that play reduces stress and encourages active living."

Rice envisions Bison's Bluff as a place where children will set their own playtime agendas. She quotes the famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget: "For a child to understand something, he must construct it himself. He must reinvent it."

"That's exactly what those kids are going to be doing out there at Bison's Bluff - reinventing play," Rice said. "They're going to play games that haven't even been conceived yet."

Benefits of unstructured play