Welcome to Three Rivers County Park
2600 Nevada Street - Lake Station, Indiana 46405
Park open 7 am - sunset year round
Traveling from the west,
exit Interstate 80/94 at Central Avenue. Turn left (west) on Central to
Colorado Street, then south to the "T" and right to the park
gate. From the east exit I-80/94 at U.S. 51 (Ripley Street) then
south to Central Avenue and right (west) to Colorado Street. Note:
There is no exit for Central Avenue off I-80/94 from the east.
Three Rivers County Park offers the following features:
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fishing information
WELCOME
TO THREE RIVERS COUNTY PARK
Three
Rivers County Park was the eleventh park in the Lake County Park system.
While in the planning stages for many years it has been envisioned to
be the eastern recreation anchor to the Little Calumet Flood Control and
Recreation Project. Lake Etta is
at the western end.
Land
acquisition negotiations have been on going since the late 1980's.
In 1996 the Lake County Parks acquired approximately 45 acres (38
acre lake and land surrounding the lake).
In 1997 an additional 17 acres was acquired.
Shortly
after the park was opened to the public on July 13, 1999, plans were being
made for the next major improvement. After
researching the feasibility of various recreational opportunities, the park
board decided a focus on early learning would fill a need that was lacking
in the area. Both recreational
and educational component could be addressed with a facility that would
provide for interactive play both indoors and out.
Thus began a long road toward the development of a Children’s
Discovery Play Center, planned to open in the fall of 2008.
The
Center, designed by the White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group, is
based on proven concepts of the positive relationship between play and
cognitive and social development. Activities
will combine fun and entertainment with education and learning both indoors
and out.
The
FUN Discovery Play Center is designed for children from infancy through age
eight. The colorful and
imaginative center features 23,000 square foot of hands-on activities.
Self-guided play in a child-sized supermarket, construction zone, and
pizza parlor, for example, will provide areas for children not only to
interact with others, but to participate in dramatic play that stimulates
intellectual growth. Additional
elements include block play, do-it-yourself face painting, an art studio,
dress-up, water tables, soft-contained-play equipment, a reading room,
children’s do-it-yourself cooking, a performance area, and space just for
infants and toddlers with developmentally-appropriate play activities.
Educators
and parents have long understood the value of play as it relates to the
foundations for early learning. When
children use concrete objects in dramatic ways, such as playing in a pretend
grocery store or a kid’s size construction zone, they learn social skills
and competency. Written cues
through signs help children get ready to read and write.
They understand that the written symbols on paper carry meaning –
even if they can’t yet read. Play
apparatus will help in motor development, including gross and fine motor
skills.
Additional
elements include block play, do-it-yourself face painting, an art studio,
dress-up, water tables, soft-contained-play equipment, a reading room, a
performance area, and space just for infants and toddlers with
developmentally-appropriate play activities.
As
adults, we may think children are “just playing”, but consider how much
language development is happening as children respond to each other and work
out the details of play.
They’ll
never know they’re learning. . .
But,
we will
Other
features include café seating for more than 200 people located in the
center of the building surrounded by the play areas.
Five private birthday party rooms will prove the perfect place for
that special birthday boy or girl. The
Center will also fit the needs of preschool and elementary grade school
field trips. While the focus is on non-structured play, special activities
and adult-guided programs will also be scheduled.
The
Center will be open year-round. It
will be THE place to bring little ones for learning and LOTS of FUN.
Admission prices will be set after the first of the year.
School groups may schedule reserved programs after the center opens
sometime in the summer of 2008.
To
be placed on a email update list email us at info@lakecountyparks.com
Adults
are from Earth; Children are from the Moon
Designing for Children: A Complex Challenge
By Randy White
© 2004 White Hutchinson
Leisure & Learning Group
One of the challenges we constantly face
when designing for children is to create an environment (including equipment
and furniture) that produces the desired behavior and outcomes - and deters
undesirable behavior. This challenge holds true whether we're designing a
children's environment for entertainment, edutainment, play or enrichment
(early childhood education). Just as there is a gulf of misunderstanding
between genders, often described with the analogy "women are from
Venus; men are from Mars," likewise there is a gulf of
misunderstanding between most adult designers of children's environments and
the children they're designing for.
Kids will do the darnedest and most
unexpected things when it comes to interacting with the environment. If you
have any doubts about this, consider a recent news story:
A 7-year-old boy crawled inside an
arcade-type crane machine at a Piggly Wiggly supermarket in
Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and then couldn't get out. The website for Action
2News in Green Bay, Wisconsin, reported that when firefighters arrived,
the child was sitting inside the machine among the stuffed animals. He had
crawled into the 8-inch by 10-inch vending slot while his father talked on a
pay phone three feet away. The child remained calm during the hour that it
took a locksmith to free him, then made a quick dash for the restroom, said
fire department officials.
This story from the news is a good
illustration of how children will make things in the environment that aren't
meant to be interactive, interactive. And the younger the child is, the more
likely this will happen. This is because of the vast differences in the way
children and adults look at their environment. Adults view the environment
in terms of form, shapes, and structures and as background. So if something
like a couch is in a public place, adults will interpret it only for its
socially acceptable use, for sitting upon. Children, on the other hand,
interpret the environment holistically and evaluate it for all the ways they
can interact with it. They use the environment to aid their development and
improve themselves. They look for the environment's affordances --
the opportunities it affords them to do things. Also, children
interpret the environment in terms of its possible function rather than its
form. So in the case of the couch, because children haven't yet acquired the
social norms for its accepted use (and aren't developmentally ready to
accept social norms for behavior), they see the couch as something that
affords them opportunities for bouncing on, sprawling out on, climbing on,
jumping over and hiding behind. A rock, if small enough, is perceived by a
child as something to grasp and throw — it affords grasping and throwing.
If the rock is larger, it could afford stepping on, looking under or
climbing on.
Another simple example is a long straight
hall in a building. A child sees it as affording her a chance to run, and
run down the hall she will. Similarly, a wall 3-feet high is perfect for
walking and balancing on. In all these cases, the child is not misbehaving.
She is doing exactly what her brain is biologically wired to have her do,
based upon the environment's affordances and her developmental age. She is
fulfilling what is known as her development tasks, one of which is to
explore and interact with the environment. When a child behaves in an
environment in a way that adults see as improper, it is not usually the
child's fault, but more often adults' fault for not designing the
environment appropriately for children.
Environments for children need to be
designed with careful consideration of four basic environmental needs
children have:
· Movement
The environment needs to offer children an invitation to move within safe
and tolerable limits, and every child will move to a different drummer. If
too restricted, children become frustrated and fidgety, or they try to gain
access to prohibited components of the environment.
· Comfort
A feeling of comfort is important to children's use of and exploration of
the environment. There needs to be moderate and varied levels of stimulation
for all the senses. Behavior is optimized at a comfort zone of
stimulation, neither too little or too much. An overload of sensory
stimulation and noise will exacerbate children's feelings of discomfort and
result in undesired behaviors.
· Competence
Children need to feel successful in negotiating the environment. Yet the
world at large forces them to constantly confront intimidating and
frustrating experiences. Successful children's environments are designed to
make children competent inhabitants and users.
· Control
Children need the ability to exercise control over the environment and
acquire increased levels of autonomy. Children must have experiences that
allow them to experiment and make decisions.
The balance of this article explores in
greater detail the elements of design required to accomplish these four
goals and create successful environments for children's use.
One of the challenges in designing
environments for use by children is to offer them the affordances for the
desired behaviors. Through deliberate design, you can keep children from
using the environment in inappropriate ways by eliminating affordances for
undesired behavior. When it comes to leisure and play areas, this is
accomplished by offering children age-appropriate affordances that produce
the desired outcomes. If children are drawn to the entertainment and play
components, they will not be drawn to inappropriate use (in an adult's eyes)
of the other elements in the environment. This requires that children be
challenged and not become bored. Otherwise, they will start interacting with
those other elements or sometimes become aggressive in their behavior. Of
course, there is also the issue of eliminating affordances for the wrong
behavior, such as not having throwable stones, or walls that can be climbed
and walked, or long straight halls.
Children become bored when there's a
mismatch between what they have the ability to do and what they are expected
or want to do. They enjoy themselves when their skills match the
developmentally appropriate task at hand. If they're challenged beyond their
capability, they become anxious and often claim boredom as a defense. If not
challenged enough, they're bored. In either case, a bored child will find
ways to be challenged by climbing, running or other behaviors that match
their abilities. Children prefer and are most drawn to play environments
with high degrees of challenge, diversity, novelty and complexity. The type,
quality and diversity of children's play environments directly affect the
type, quality and diversity of their play.
Since children's developmental tasks and
skill levels change constantly as they age, the point where boredom sets in
is a moving target. Children's physical (fine and gross motor), intellectual
and social skills are constantly advancing. This means that children's
environments must offer what is known as graduated challenges, a
range of challenges, as even the same age children have different levels of
skills and acceptable challenge.
The ability children posses to interact
with, control and transform their environment is very important to them.
Children want to explore, manipulate and transform the environment.
Environments that include loose parts that children can manipulate,
move and construct with are immensely more engaging than static equipment
and environments.
Most of young children's play centers
around their incredible imaginations. The environment needs to promote and
support imaginative role-play with props and loose parts. However, the
environment needs to be open-ended so children can use their imaginations to
develop their own play scripts. Highly scripted, structured and overly
themed environments stifle children's creativity, short-circuit extended
play and can quickly lead to boredom.
An important aspect for children's use of
the environment is that they are more interested in the process of using
the environment than achieving an end result like adults do.
And then there are the concepts known as anthropometrics
and ergonomics, (sometimes referred to as human factors
engineering) which means designing things to match children's physical
sizes and abilities. This includes such characteristics as height, grip,
reach, field of vision, etc., so that tasks can be performed with a minimum
of stress and maximum of efficiency and safety. It doesn't do any good to
design equipment that doesn't fit a child's anthropometrics and skills and
isn't ergonomically correct. Either he will not be able to use the equipment
or he will feel incompetent trying to, and neither outcome will make him
desire to return. And poorly designed equipment, furniture and environments
that don't match children's anthropometrics can actually be dangerous. If a
shelf is too high and a child wants something on it, she will often find a
way to get to it -- likely in an unsafe manner such as climbing on lower
shelves that may not be designed to support the weight of a child.
Ergonomically incorrect environments can injure children. Research is now
showing that children, with their still growing musculoskeletal systems, may
be susceptible to musculoskeletal injury (MSDs) by using improperly designed
equipment such as standard adult-size computer keyboards and ergonomically
incorrect computer workstations. Surveys report a high incidence of
children's computer-related aches and pains, including discomfort with
wrists, necks and hands.
OK, as complicated as all this sounds, it
gets even more challenging.
There's the issue of children's attention
spans, which can be much shorter than that of adults. So something that at
first interests a child can 10 minutes later become boring. To overcome this
challenge, the environment must offer a wide variety of options. Too little
a variety of equipment and materials limits children's play options and
leads to increased levels of boredom and aggression. Another factor that
drives the need for variety is known as multiple intelligences. The
theory of multiple intelligences challenges the traditional notion that
intelligence is a single, fixed commodity. Rather, it says we all possess
eight distinct and somewhat autonomous intelligences to differing degrees
— linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic,
intrapersonal, interpersonal and naturalist. We tend to be most interested
in activities that match our stronger intelligences. There are also distinct
differences between the interests of girls and boys. Therefore, the variety
of activities must appeal to the broadest range of multiple intelligences
and to both genders.
The scale of the environmental space also
influences children's behavior. Research shows that the more child-scaled
the environmental space, the higher the quality and complexity of children's
play will be, and the longer they will be preoccupied in the play. In other
words, a child-scaled environment increases children's interest and
concentration, and it delays boredom. In a large space, children are
encouraged through reading the environment to move about from one thing to
another, whereas in small contained areas, they are more focused. Areas for
different activities need to be well defined with identifiable boundaries in
ways that children can interpret. The relationship between areas and
activities, what we call adjacencies and zoning, also has an
impact on children's behavior and the quality of their activities.
Institutional size and looking buildings and large entries, lobbies and
public spaces are very intimidating and uninviting for children. Children
are most comfortable with residential looking buildings and residential
scale spaces.
Other factors also influence children's
enjoyment of play and entertainment. Indoors this includes the décor,
colors, lighting and acoustics. And outdoors, nature and the abundant use of
plants in informal settings have been shown to enhance children's
concentration, reduce their stress, increase their feelings of well-being
and help them further develop imagination and a sense of wonder. Children
have a strong preference to play outdoors in a natural environment, as
opposed to one built indoors.
Predictability and routine are important
to children, as well. It helps give them a sense of control over the
environment and their daily lives. There needs to be a balance between not
too much sameness and not too much change and contrast -- what is called differences-within-sameness.
This concept is best exemplified by nature, with its subtle changes of wind,
light, sounds and its seasons. If an environment a child repeatedly visits
is constantly changing, the child will experience discomfort and anxiety.
A well-designed environment can be
deciphered by children. They can orient themselves, recognize how the space
they are in connects to adjoining spaces and figure out how to get to a
desired destination - a concept know as wayfinding. Children's short
stature makes this especially challenging unless the environment is designed
from a child's-eye view. Younger children don't read. So where signs work
for adults, the environment itself needs to be designed to give children
equivalent non-language way finding communication. An important aspect of
younger children's orientation is known as transitioning. Children
cannot process new environments as quickly as do adults. They need more time
to adjust. The use of transitioning spaces and transparency from space to
space greatly assists children with transitioning.
Safety is also a crucial consideration.
The environment must be designed not only to prevent unsafe behavior or
situations and injury, but also designed to minimize injury when an incident
occurs. Situations where a child cannot evaluate the risk, such as head and
finger entrapments, need to be avoided. However, to be interesting to
children, equipment must present some risks, but risks where a child can
evaluate the challenge. What are considered risks for older children can be
hazards for younger children. Environments considered appropriate and safe
for older children will often be dangerous to younger children, requiring
age segregation of areas. Environments with activities that are safe when
children are supervised can be dangerous if children are left unsupervised.
Children's familiarity with each other
also affects their play and interactions with other children. A group
together regularly in a childcare setting will interact differently both
with the environment and with each other than will children who do not know
each other. The same environment design won't necessarily work for both
groups.
Another consideration: Children are also
more sensitive to environmental hazards than adults are. This includes
chemicals, VOC emissions (volatile off-gassing organic chemicals from
building materials) and foods they are allergic to. Good air quality is also
essential. Toxicity and sanitation are especially important considerations
for the youngest children who will often mouth anything they come into
contact with. Many designers overlook the aspect of selecting non-toxic
indoor plants and outdoor vegetation in children's environments.
Accessibility for children with
disabilities is another design challenge. Unfortunately, the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) fails to adequately address children's accessibility,
as it focuses mainly on wheelchair accessibility for adults. Even the
alternative ADA children's standards fail to address the environmental
challenges faced by children with non-wheelchair mobility disabilities,
including walkers, leg braces, limited vision, Attention Deficit Disorder
(ADD) and Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The other
problem is that following ADA standards during the design process can often
make the environment and equipment unusable by able-bodied children. An
approach known as universal design is required to make environments
truly usable by the greatest number of children. Universal design is an
approach to design that honors human diversity and addresses the right for
everyone — from children to the elderly — to use all environments,
products and information in an independent, inclusive, and equal way.
Durability and maintenance are important
considerations in designing any environment for children's use. Children
will give things more wear and tear than adults do and will definitely get
things dirtier faster. Materials need to be durable and easy to clean and
maintain. Using materials and finishes that can be sanitized is important,
especially when with infants and toddlers will be present in the environment
being designed.
Designing for children is no simple task,
since most adult designers have a completely different perception of the
environment than the users they are designing for. If you put children in an
environment not properly designed for them, all kinds on unexpected and
undesired behaviors and outcomes result. Children are going to use the
environment in ways that their biology tells them to, so it's the
responsibility of adults to design children's environments carefully to
produce the desired behaviors. Positive outcomes for children's behavior in
a leisure or education setting will be produced only when the environments
have been design with a thorough knowledge of child development, play,
anthropometrics, ergonomics, environmental factors, way finding,
environmental psychology and universal design.
For information about the White Hutchinson
group and other articles on children's education see their web page at www.whitehutchinson.com
FOR SHELTER RESERVATIONS CALL
Phone: 219-769-PARK, 219-945-0543 or 219-755-3685
Lake County Parks and Recreation Department Corporate Offices
8411 East Lincoln Highway, Crown Point, Indiana 46307
Located just west of Deep River Waterpark 4.5 miles east of I-65 on Route 30