Designing Zoo Experiences for Affect:Developing
the Hamill Family Zoo at Brookfield Zoo
Gail Mikenas
The process of creating a master plan to renovate our Children’s Zoo launched us right out of the cognitive comfort zone and into that ambiguous arena of affect. In 1997, we embarked on our “affective adventure” with a three-day planning charrette we held to learn how to help guide children toward developing a caring attitude toward nature. We invited professionals with expertise in environmental psychology, developmental psychology, environmental education, early childhood learning, informal learning, and exhibit development to share their knowledge with us. We also asked them to brainstorm exhibits and experiences that might help children feel closer to nature.
We learned a great deal in those three days, but there were two strong take-home messages:
- Children whose early nature experiences are supported by an enthusiastic grown-up are more likely to be supportive of the environment when they become adults.
- Nature play is a key component in helping children develop empathy toward nature.
Energized and motivated by the charrette, we began working on what became Explore! A Child’s Nature, a three-phase renovation plan for our Children’s Zoo. The goal of this exhibit is to help families with children from birth to age 10 develop a caring attitude toward nature. The Hamill Family Play Zoo, the first phase of the master plan, opened on June 14, 2001.
The Play Zoo differs from previous projects at Brookfield Zoo in four general ways.
- It is specifically geared toward helping children develop a caring attitude at an emotional level rather than communicating specific scientific concepts or encouraging specific actions to benefit the environment.
- It relies on specially trained staff, including young and adult volunteers, to model caring and to provide enthusiastic interactions with children and their families.
- The focus is on young children and their families. The exhibit provides developmentally appropriate activities, spaces, and materials that children need in order to grow.
- We have focused on helping adults understand the importance of nature experiences in their children’s development, and we offer suggestions on how to easily provide these experiences for children at home.
A critical component of planning for the Play Zoo was helping project partners understand how this exhibit would be different from other exhibits at the zoo. Our Board of Trustees, staff, donors, volunteers, and guests, as well as the community, needed to be comfortable with and supportive of an exhibit that was going to look different, have its own vocabulary, and include a significant investment in staff. Our director, Dr. George B. Rabb, played a significant role by continually helping key players understand the research, process, and messages behind this effort.
As we worked on the concept phase of the master plan,
we enthusiastically expanded the number of guiding principles to 31. Several
principles were especially important for development of the Play Zoo and
are now incorporated into the exhibit.
Promote Experiences with a Special Adult
We have learned the importance of having specially trained adults interact with children and their families. Our play staff, called Play Partners, come from all walks of life. Each Play Partner has survived a long, very interactive interview, followed by four months of training on topics that include child development, how to play with children, and safe, effective animal handling for guest contact.
The play staff, zookeepers, and groundskeepers have
learned to concentrate on letting children take the lead in discussions,
observations, activities, and coming up with new ideas. They have also
learned to encourage creativity and pay more attention to process rather
than product. The Play Partners, zookeepers, groundskeepers, and volunteers
are key to making sure each child has an opportunity to experience nature
in a way that is most meaningful to him or her.
Start with the Familiar
Based on the charrette with the experts and on other research, we feel it is important for children to start caring about things they are familiar with, such as individual animals, plants, or rocks, before we can help them care about natural systems.
The Zoo at Home section of the Play Zoo is designed to provide a familiar setting with a living room, family room, kitchen, child’s room, and porch. In this part of the exhibit, children and adults have a chance to be close to the animals they know best: their pets. There, children can talk to a willing listener about their own pets while getting to know the pets in the Zoo at Home. Staff, child-friendly reference books, and a computer program help families determine what might be the best pet for their household.
Children over five are encouraged to bring in natural
materials to exchange in the Nature Swap, a space designed like a child’s
room and filled with rocks, shells, pinecones, and other common “stuff”
children collect. Play staff and volunteers talk to each child about how
his or her items are special. For each item, the child then gets points,
which are entered into a computer. The child may trade points for another
item in the Nature Swap.
Provide Opportunities to Practice Care-Giving
We want children to be able to help take care of animals, plants, gardens, and exhibits in the Play Zoo. To do this, we have worked with union staff and union representatives in creating activities that allow children to practice care-giving. This arrangement allows us to respect work that needs to be done by union staff as outlined in the labor contract.
Children at the Play Zoo now help zookeepers, groundskeepers,
and exhibit designers with a variety of care-giving tasks. For situations
in which children cannot work with real animals, pretend animals and props
are incorporated. The Play Hospital is one setting in which the caring
is often very intense, but the activities involve plush animals with removable
organs rather than live animals.
Provide Opportunities for Authentic Experiences
We want kids to do real work and have real experiences in the Play Zoo. Authentic experiences often involve the institution, as well as visitors taking risks. Institutions must be comfortable creating open-ended visitor experiences that are more challenging to facilitate as well as evaluate.
Our Life Safety officer’s expertise was critical in reviewing proposed visitor experiences. We prototyped many activities and kept most, but we agreed that some pushed the envelope a little too far for our comfort zone. Since the Play Zoo opened in June, visitors have continually provided positive feedback on activities designed to provide “real” experiences for families.
Under adult supervision in the Workshop, children over five use real hammers and nails, along with safety goggles, to build birdhouses or make exhibit components.
In the Zoo Director’s Office, they can build their own zoo or put on a business jacket and use an interactive telephone to answer zoo questions.
In the outside exhibit area, children hop barefoot
from rock to rock through the Play Stream. They leap about as they pretend
to be lemurs in the indoor and outdoor lemur exhibit play areas. They
dig in and plant live plants with a real groundskeeper in the Play Greenhouse.
All on their own or with some friendly help from a Play Partner, they
build animal homes in the Animal Homes Adventure Playground.
Allow for Spontaneous Interactions, Play, and Learning
As we discussed activities with our Life Safety officer during planning, we sometimes wondered if there is such a thing as “safe spontaneity.” We decided that there is.
Contact with living creatures; mimicking animal behaviors;
building outdoor, child-size shelters; and releasing ladybugs in the Bug
Walk are examples of experiences designed to help promote spontaneous
interactions involving families. Our staff and volunteers play a key role
in allowing and encouraging these experiences to happen in a safe manner.
Letting children take the lead lets them comfortably explore the exhibit
creatively using resources available to them.
Create Opportunities for Extraordinary Moments and Foster the Creation of Memories
Wonderful things happen in an environment in which everyone is expected to play. The Play Zoo staff is trained to look for and to foster opportunities for extraordinary moments.
Children who put on laboratory coats in the Play Hospital immediately become doctors, encouraged in their efforts to help the play animals get better. An extraordinary moment may occur when a child cautiously wades into the Play Stream, feeling rocks beneath his or her feet and water flowing over his or her toes. A fond family memory may be created when a brother and sister, often at odds, sit together in a play nest, dressed in colorful bird costumes and arranging eggs.
The Play Zoo can offer many magical first-time experiences,
from touching a snake or rabbit to helping a zookeeper feed animals.
How Do We Know If This Whole Affective Thing Is Working?
Brookfield Zoo’s Communications Research staff has developed several evaluation plans to determine whether we are indeed reaching our goal of helping children develop a caring attitude toward nature. We have been awarded a grant to determine if certain zoo experiences increase a child’s interest in nature play at home and if specific zoo experiences increase a parent’s interest in providing nature play opportunities at home.This fall, Communications Research staff will be observing children in the Play Zoo in order to create an ethogram of what caring behaviors look like. To quote Dr. Carol Saunders, who is heading up the evaluation effort, we will be attempting to “quantify the intuitive.”
These researchers will be looking at what children do in specific spaces in the Play Zoo. Where do children take on animal characteristics? What settings do children choose to care for or pretend to care for something in nature? What happens in places in which a child is in an animal’s space and could be contacted by an animal?
The joy in developing this exhibit with an affective
goal has been in knowing that the exhibit experience will and is expected
to evolve daily. We will always be learning from children and their families,
from staff and volunteers, and from research about how nature play enriches
children’s lives and helps us reach broader conservation goals at Brookfield
Zoo.
References
Chawla, L. 1998. “Significant Life Experiences.” Journal of Environmental Education. Vol. 29, no. 3., pp. 11-21.
Vernon, C., C. Saunders, and D. Kalina, eds. 1997. Developing and Promoting Caring Attitudes Toward the Natural World: Selections from the Proceedings of a Planning Charrette Hosted by Brookfield Zoo and Minnesota Zoo. Brookfield Zoo.
Wilson, R. 1994. Fostering a Sense of Wonder During the Early Childhood Years. Greyden Press. Columbus, Ohio.
Gail Mikenas is Curator of the Children’s Zoo, Brookfield Zoo, 3300 Golf Road, Brookfield IL 60513 Phone: (708) 485-0263 x458. Email: GAMIKENA@BrookfieldZoo.org.