Ideas for Principle #12

💡 If we lower the kitchen counter, we can reach the things on it without standing on our tiptoes or bringing a chair.

If we raise the desk, we can stand and work at it, and that way avoid sitting on a chair all day.

A small table - if we shrink the table down to kid size, it becomes easier to sit by it, stand by it, and play on it. 

A sloped ramp from the sidewalk down to the street - helps strollers, wheelchairs, bikes, and more go up easily.

So for example, if we arrange our favorite toys on the bottom shelves, it becomes easy to reach them to play with them, and to put them back after we finish playing. 

Any action we think through before doing it can be made more comfortable automatically, without any effort. 

Always need help from a grown-up to reach things at home?!
When everything is built at adult height, a child always has to ask for help or climb.

It's worth thinking: how can we change the height or the distance, so we don't need to make an effort or climb at all?

The moment the things that matter to us are within reach, we simply stop feeling like there's a problem at all.

Ready for a challenge? We've prepared some extra challenges for you to try

Try checking this together. Change one thing in your surroundings so it's closer and more comfortable, and measure how much effort it saves.

Easy
1. Check together how long it takes to reach a toy on a high shelf, compared with if it were on a low one.
2. Ask your child which thing at home always feels too far away or too high up.

A bit of a stretch
3. Choose together a fixed amount to move to savings automatically, and check after a month whether it's easier than remembering every week.
4. Check together whether rearranging a drawer or a small closet saves time in the morning.

Challenge for champions
5. Ask your child to design a whole room where everything is within reach, with no need to climb or ask for help.
6. Try thinking together about a public place, like a playground or a library, and imagine what it would look like if everything were at kid height.