Month: February 2021

We have been working on reading articles and narrowing down which ones to include in our literature review. We are learning so much about how innovation and redesigning of spaces has changed since the pandemic began. According to our research, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia seem to be leading when it comes to implementing child friendly initiatives into their cities and there is alot we can all learn still.

This week, I was also chatting with my son who is in grade 5 about a research project they were working on at school. He came home feeling defeated and said he recognized that a change in how we manage our resources but thought that because he was a kid he couldn’t do anything to help make the necessary changes. It was a great opportunity for me to sit down with him and talk about creating an action plan that he could use to draft a letter to our local municipal government to express his concerns and ideas on how it could be resolved.

This conversation sparked an idea. Since it is our job as educators to give children the tools they need to be successful, I have decided to create a curriculum module that students can use to assist them in making their voices heard.

Change happens when we come together and work collaboratively, and one of the ideas that my son is going to ask our municipality for is to have the opportunity to help in the urban planning of our community. Scandinavia and the United Kingdom have been seeking input from children on various planning projects and it is making their communities happier and healthier places that families are thriving in!

– Missy

Photo Reference:
Simon Weedy. “Urban Planning Is Failing Children and Breaching Their Human Rights,” February 24, 2021. https://www.childinthecity.org/2018/12/17/urban-planning-is-failing-children-and-breaching-their-human-rights/?gdpr=accept.

It may be reading break at the Universities this week, but its the perfect opportunity for us to prep for a busy week ahead!

Next week we will be presenting information about the internship to Dr. Enns Social Urban Geography class, so we have been prepping and fine tuning the slides we are presenting . We will be be posting the presentation to the webpage in the coming weeks as well so stay tuned!

We are also working on completing some of the ethics modules, literature reviews, and attending webinars. We have been compiling a list of child friendly urban planning books that teachers can use in the classroom and these titles starting to be added to the webpage as well. There is also a list of some interesting podcasts and third party websites that may be useful for those wanting to learn more about the child friendly city initiative’s that are starting to take flight worldwide.

Enjoy your much deserved break and make sure to check back regularity to stay updated with what we are currently working on.

Last Family Day long weekend – sledding with my family in Alberta on a beautiful sunny day!

It is amazing how quickly change can happen. This time last year I spent Family Day long weekend in Alberta visiting family. It was a beautiful sunny weekend, and we spent the weekend walking around the neighborhood, playing at the parks, and sledding down the one big hill in the community. If only we would have known that just a few weeks later, the COVID-19 pandemic would hit the world and the world would enter a period of isolation. The profound effects on the mental and physical health of citizens worldwide would become more prevalent and we would start rethinking our build environments.

After the first few weeks of being isolated at home it was becoming clear that not only my mental and physical health were beginning to suffer, but my children were much more sensitive to the effects of being cut off from the world. Our backyard garden, local playgrounds and trails became our place of refuge and demonstrated the risks involved in not engaging in outdoor play.

The lockdown pushed our family to live a sedentary life in front of screens for a few weeks; in that short amount of time, I noticed my children were becoming increasingly unhappy and their suffering was becoming profoundly more acute. The pandemic brought light to the importance that playgrounds play in children’s lives.

The playgrounds were not the same and we had to be creative about how to play in these spaces safely. I could see the shift in the state of their mental health change for the better once we started to explore our community and spent more time amongst nature. Many parents found the playgrounds to be the perfect place for engaging in distanced social interaction. Parks have become more than just a place for children to play, they are also a place for physical and mental wellbeing; proving that our community parks are more important than many of us realized.

This weekend has given me time to reflect on what really matters…

There is a longstanding shortage of funding for community parks which have become an essential amenity since the COVID-19 outbreak and without these parks, where do children go to play? Parks create a sense of community and opportunities for freedom and social interaction that is essential for good health. Now is the time to start showing the government the importance of investing more into the creation of child friendly cities. The webinars, research, and articles I am reviewing for this internship are showing me different ways that we can get children more involved in urban planning that will create an inclusive and healthy community for all.  Children really are the future!

– Missy

Wow! What a week it has been.

We have been busy looking for journals, articles, new paper stories and much more! It seems as we begin to look at child friendly cities that a hole opens up that we are tumbling through and several hours have passed. I have realized that many of the studies, or closer looks at child friendly cities have been heavily focused in the UK. Check out some of the notes from webinars we have attended to get an idea.

While this is just the beginning of the research and literature we will be looking at, I have a feeling that we definitely are not done yet. I am okay with that, the more we research, the more we learn. Not only are we able to share the wealth of knowledge we find with our partners in Chandigarh but it is something that we can bring to the classroom. We can apply the lens of a child friendly city in our classrooms and see what the next generation of children have to say.

Though this week has come with its challenges as well. We are creeping up to the half way mark in the semester and everything else is ramping up as well. I have found that this week has been full of zoom webinars and meetings and I am looking forward to the weekend with a little less screen time. Virtual everything is challenging at times, but I am going to take that as a sign to get out and explore my city more.

Not only have I been looking in articles, but out of a random conversation the three of us had I am now looking into podcasts that we can link here. Hopefully all of the videos, podcasts, and webinar notes help any future teachers who stumble across our blog later.

Stay tuned for what Missy and Casandra have been up to!

– Stephanie

Hey everyone, Stephanie here. I have been thinking about the curriculum modules we are beginning to create and it made me think that if we are asking the students to go out and explore their city, neighbourhood or community then why shouldn’t we also explore OUR spaces too. We have to model the activities so that the students can have a better understanding of what we would like them to do.

This morning I decided to explore part of the neighbourhood I live in and see what I could find. I live in a pretty dense urban area with an industrial/business area close by. Not to mention the two major roads that sandwich me between them. You could say that I wasn’t super optimistic of what I would find on my walk this morning. Well as I explored I found this little park with some forested area around it nestled in amongst the single family homes. I was pleasantly surprised to find this little park and green space for the children in the area to have to explore, create and imagine in. While I wish there was more green space for them to utilize I also thought maybe the children in the area use the spaces around their houses to create, play and imagine together. Perhaps the lack of green space encourages them to collaborate together to create chalk drawings, fantasy lands and a space to build their own ‘city’.

Stay tuned for a map of my neighbourhood!