Instead, they saw natural elements of wood and stone scattered around a sculpted grassy area.

“I thought it would be a normal playground like the ones we are accustomed to, but it was not an ordinary playground,” said the senior elementary education major. “I looked at the balance beam – it was two tree stumps and a long piece of wood. We used to do that when I was a kid! It was very natural.”

Zone 1 of is part of a 17-acre playground created to provide elementary-age children with open-ended, physically challenging play opportunities using natural elements and items, referred to as “loose parts,” strategically included to stimulate their imaginations.

Sherri Brown, associate professor in the College of łÉČËÖ±˛Ą and Human Development, brought 15 students from her science methods class to the playground in October to help the future teachers explore natural surroundings as an opportunity to consider new ways to teach science concepts to elementary students.

“The idea was to get them out there and see what’s possible in a playground that is very unique. You see boards, you see levers, you see ramps,” Brown said. “Earth science, physical science, materials – all that is in the science curriculum. Here children can experience things that stimulate child-generated questions. This helps our UofL students as future elementary science teachers see what is possible and what is different from formal learning environments.”

The students chose and examined three separate areas of Zone 1 to consider how children might use the space and how, as a teacher, they might use items found in the natural world to introduce discussions about science and other subjects to their own students.

Another feature Hunter noticed was a swing suspended on a single line so it could move in multiple directions.

“That shows force and motion. You could talk about music in the noise it makes as it moves. There were so many content areas and concepts that could be taught in this place,” Hunter said. “The kids are playing and having fun, but learning at the same time. They are going to learn on their own whether they realize it or not.”

Designed by Claude Stephens, director of Bernheim’s Children at Play Network, and other members of the Bernheim team, Playcosystem is intended to inspire children to learn by exploring the natural world. Zone 1 of the site, geared to young children, is one of three planned zones. Zones 2 and 3 will introduce progressively larger and more challenging landscapes and natural elements to appeal to more mature children.

Brown, Jill Jacobi-Vessels and Meg Gravil, also of CEHD, are studying and documenting the thought and planning behind the Playcosystem and plan to study how children and families experience it.

“Research has shown that outdoor play benefits children’s social, emotional, cognitive and physical development,” Brown said. “Knowing why and how it was built deepens their knowledge and the framework of how children and parents engage with the site.”

The students, led by junior applied geography (environmental analysis track) major and Grawemeyer Scholar Sam Kessler, invented the tool during a service project with Metropolitan Sewer District, Bernheim Forest and The Nature Conservancy. They volunteered to help monitor, clean up and restore streams in Louisville, including testing them for E.coli bacteria, which is found in biological waste and can sometimes cause disease. 

But, the team would have to consistently travel to each site — 10 sites across three different watersheds — at least five times per month to keep pace with the minimum testing required by the Environmental Protection Agency and Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection.

“With our class schedules, going to each of those sites multiple times per month wasn’t going to work for very long,” Kessler said. “We were traveling to some of these sites four times per week in between classes – Beargrass Creek, Bernheim Forest and all over. We needed something more efficient.”

To solve that problem, Kessler said, they invented a now patent-pending tool made from PVC pipe containing a special type of sediment material in mesh bags that can be left in the stream and read just once per month. Kessler believes their tool could dramatically improve the time and cost efficiency of testing.

“This is set-and-forget. You can leave it in the stream or river all month and test once instead of making at least five different trips,” he said. “And, because it’s in the stream all month instead of the isolated tests we currently do, you get more insightful results from a cumulative sample. This research could significantly improve the way we sample water for E.coli.”

Current testing only measures the levels of E.coli at the time of the test, not the days in between tests, Kessler said. For example, if a test on Monday shows no E.coli, the tester would have no way of knowing the stream was polluted the next day. Because the students’ tool can be left in the water all month, he said the result is a more comprehensive, cumulative sample.

“Understanding what makes safe, clean waterways is complex,” said Erin Wagoner, Environmental Partnerships Liaison for Louisville MSD. “From all the ways that land draining to a stream is used, to the chemical composition of the water in the stream, making these connections to improve the health of our waterways is a challenge. Creating a plan and developing a tool to make this process more efficient removes barriers to diagnosing the problems we are all trying to solve.”

While the tool has been tested only with E.coli so far, Kessler sees other potential applications. For example, he is interested in investigating whether it could be used to screen for SARS-CoV-2 by placing the device in wastewater.

“During COVID-19 specifically, limiting the amount of time human personnel are testing in the field is a smart thing to do,” Kessler said. “Maybe this could help.”