It's a Great Time for Making Forts

Photo Credit: Boston Globe

At the same time that Clovid19 has closed down restaurants, gyms, shops, and museums, it seems to have opened up the world of children’s fort making.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed a lot about fort making lately—inside, outside, under tables or beds, in closets or corners. I’ve also heard from parents that the forts their children are making are impressive. I gather from examples here, here, and here that others are noticing this as well.

 

We shouldn’t be surprised. Fort making is what children do and need to do. They find forts, make forts, and play in forts, indoors and out, in the spaces where they live and spend time. Fort making is an enduring expression of childhood. It is something I did as a child, my sisters and brothers did, and, it is likely, you probably did too.

 

While some people see fort building now as a result of boredom from spending many and long days at home during the pandemic, I see it as what children finally get to do with time, space, and freedom courtesy of the pandemic.

 

As children spend more time at home and explore their home environments, they have an opportunity to know familiar spaces more deeply and discover the fort-making potential of rooms, alcoves, in between and out-of-the-way spaces. Children have time–more time, down time, time with fewer distractions and interruptions. Stretches of time and time over several days allow them to return to a project or work with ideas from one day mulled over and put into action the next day and the next. Many children are enjoying a rare freedom from structured activities and close parental monitoring. In fact, parents and caregivers working from home, homeschooling, and trying to create good family times together are less available for structuring or directing children’s activities, including fort building. And it’s not such a bad thing, actually.

 

What’s in a Fort?

At their most basic, forts are small spaces-within-spaces created by children from available materials where children can be alone or with someone else in a world of their making.

 

When we think about children’s fort making, we tend to think first about the structures themselves, constructions that cover a wide and interesting range of structures and spaces. Typically, these are original, one-of-a-kind structures indoors or out referred to as caves, cubby holes, cozy spaces, huts, dens, and forts. They might be tucked into an alcove, under the stairs, between chairs, under the desk, or in bed. Made of blankets, sheets, cushions, crates, cardboard tubes and boxes, duct tape or furniture, as well as leaves, snow, and branches, they come in all shapes, sizes, materials, and conditions. Sometimes appearing messy and unassuming, they might look like a huddle of furniture or a pile of laundry.

 

A hallmark of childhood, children’s fort making begins around 4 years, increases through 7 years, and continues until around 12 or 13 years. Active,

curious, and resourceful as fort makers, children gather, collect, and arrange materials and objects, dragging chairs, stacking cushions, or draping sheets, towels, or blankets over chairs. They define their space, make a pleasing arrangement, and embellish it with cherished objects. Working alone and sometimes with others, they draw on a wide range of capabilities and skills, create a small world for themselves, make up and act out stories, read, or pretend to be invisible.

Fort making is not a linear step-by-step activity packaged in a kit. Rather, it emerges from a dynamic, relatively seamless, back-and-forth stream of processes and activities. Through play, building, and exploration and offering discovery and change, children carve out and shape space for themselves in the world. Like play, fort making is directed by the child, propelled by an idea or inspiration, and intrinsically satisfying. Part exploration, fort making involves an investigation of materials, objects, and environments and their properties using their senses and a range of skills. Children’s fort making transforms space, reveals new perspectives, encourages capabilities, and expands possibilities.

 

These brief descriptions of forts, fort makers, and the process of building hardly begin to uncover how fort making is a rich, productive, and satisfying experience for children. To explore more how these elements engage in the messy, sprawling, open-ended, joyful fort making for children, throughout and across childhoods, I’ve framed five constructs. They are informed by literature, observation, photos, drawings of forts, and adults’ memories and stories of fort building. In real-life fort making, these constructs easily overlap and constantly interact with one another. Looked at individually, however, each shines a light on an experience or opportunity that is compelling to the child, memorable for adults, and supportive of the development and learning in the years between.  

•      When it comes to fort making, children are in charge.

•      Fort making stands a little outside of ordinary time and space and transforms it.

•      In fort making, children make sense of others, themselves, and the world.

•      In fort making, children create a 3-D version of their imagination that they can inhabit.

•      Fort making is opportunistic.

 

 

Five Constructs on the Nature of Fort Making                    

When it comes to fort making, children are in charge.

In houses, apartments, garages, sheds, and yards, children interact with space and materials and make something happen. They decide what to build, where to build and how to build. Drawing on their knowledge of physical space, they start by selecting a promising place for a fort. They choose furniture and objects, gather coverings, and they combine them in particular ways to create a structure that suits them. As they order their physical surroundings and embellish spaces with their belongings and selected objects that appeal to them, they follow their ideas and interests, encounter new ones, and weigh new choices.

 

The opportunity to do this—to be in charge of an activity and influence what happens in a small corner of their world—is something that is all too rare for most children. In their fort, children have the freedom to explore space, investigate objects, cultivate friendships, and engage with the imaginary. In deciding whether the walls should be two or three cushions high; whether the fort is a starship, a library, or a cave; and which story ideas will be acted out, children are exercising control in ways that matter to them. Of no small significance is children’s control of the boundary between inside and out, where their space ends, who or what comes in—or doesn’t.  

Fort making stands a little outside of ordinary time and space and transforms it.

Forts originate in the physical and imaginative space and time of homes, families, and daily schedules.

In the physical world, the child looks around a very familiar home space with new eyes. They scout seemingly empty spaces, small spaces, out-of-the-way places, and openings where they can fit and build in spaces often overlooked by others. When interesting as well as available space is found under the stairs, in a closet, or even in a bathtub, the child appropriates that space. When it comes to claiming space for their purposes, being under the table is being under the radar for children; being out of the way opens a door.

 

Time is a critical dimension in fort making and it’s not ordinary time. Squeezed in between family routines and scheduled activities, fort time is incidental. As children slip in-and-out of the space, they move between recurring themes, alternate worlds, and multiple time frames. Typical rules about time don’t necessarily apply. Instead, real- and imaginary-time mix. Children imagine that they are some place else and they pretend it is real. The view out the window is a part of the backdrop and becomes part of the story. Movement from day to night can happen in a flash. Or no time at all is specified.

 

In fort making, children make sense of others, themselves, and the world.

While typically small, forts are packed with multi-sensory information. Constructing the fort, repeatedly moving in and out of it, or making room for a friend occurs through a constant dialogue between the child and physical space, its materials and their properties. Children are picking up sensory information about how their body fits into the fort, how the fort’s sides moved when bumped; how outside sounds come in.

 

Forts are social as well as physical spaces. They are made by children for themselves and, often, for friends. The fort's physical features, its size, enclosure,

and lighting influence whether this is a retreat for one or makes room for a friend; a space that invites imagining together, sharing secrets, playing games, and growing friendship.

 

In these special places, children find something of themselves that is difficult to find elsewhere. Choosing and arranging materials, they practice existing skills, explore new ones, and enjoy feelings of accomplishment and confidence. When children experience themselves as builders, makers, and creators, they have important evidence that they can have an impact on the world.

 

Forts are also where children can explore being themselves. These seemingly simple structures are an expression of self, intention, imagination, and competence. They offer solitude, separation from family, retreat, and independence. A fort can be a place to explore being someone else.

 

In fort making, children create a 3-D version of their imagination that they can inhabit.

Avid makers and doers, children make many things: drawings, collages, cardboard gizmos, clay bowls, dioramas. Very seldom, however, do they create something at a scale that allows them to crawl into, occupy, and experience the creation that has emerged from their imagination.

 

Forts may have a small physical footprint, but they likely have a large footprint in the child’s mind and imagination. In forts, children’s imaginations take on physical form, forms that they can occupy. As they enter this real and imagined space, the child is immersed in ideas made real through objects, materials, choices, skills, creativity, and persistence. Inside the child encounters a place that mirrors their imagination. They connect with feelings of being in another place, with the drama of a challenge, or the perspective of someone else.

 

Being inside small, personal, often unusually-shaped spaces exercises the connection between imagination and the body. In these spaces, children notice their bodies; they explore what they can do and how they move. With gestures, actions, and new positions, they move in ways that play out what is running through their imaginations and filling the fort.

 

Being inside that space shaped by the imagination gives a glimpse into the possible. The child sees how everything—materials, ideas, memories, songs—can be an opportunity for arranging and making; how parts of the world might be changed, and how the child is able to effect those changes.

 

Fort making is opportunistic.

This free style form of construction in incidental spaces with found, discarded, and random objects, not surprisingly, incorporates unusual features which make forts one-of-a-kind creations. Varied shapes, chance features, repurposed household goods can both inspire and drive a fort’s design.. Unlike the large numbers of regularly shaped blocks and bricks in building sets, fort-making materials come in unusual shapes and limited numbers without directions to follow.

 

Photo credit: 1,000 Awesome Things

Found and repurposed materials speak to the child of possibilities. Children notice, investigate, and exploit various features; they test their properties as they incorporate them into their structure. Using ingenuity and resourcefulness, children come up with ways to create a fort: drape blankets, wedge pillows into place; anchor sheets by tucking them into a drawer; place the hole in the blanket to be a window; put two chairs together. What is found is used and valued.   

 

Provisional, temporary, changing over time, and sometimes a permanent work-in-progress, the opportunistic nature of fort making means that forts are in perpetual beta. Based on failures and new finds, children develop, test, and revise their forts; they make substitutions when borrowed supplies must be returned to the closet or kitchen. Children themselves are changing, learning from their fort making, and bringing exposure to new ideas to their building.

 

It seems that, as the child works on the fort, the fort works on the child.

 

 

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My thanks to Tom Bedard, Saki Iwamoto, Nina LeSaout, Aaron Sennitt, and Lani Shapiro