---
title: "Place Explorers (for children)"
url: https://cavendish.space/place-explorers.html
updated: 2026-09-20
license: CC0-1.0
license_url: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
---
# Place Explorers

## Every room has a spot for how you feel

Some days you want to be alone. Some days you want a few friends close by. Some days you just want people nearby, with nobody talking to you.

All of that is okay. None of it is better than the rest.

A good room has a spot for each of the five places below. When you can find the spot you need, the room is doing its job.

>> If your room has no cave yet, that is the room's job to fix. It is not yours.

## The five places

### the cave

![the cave](faces/places--the-cave.svg)

Your own quiet spot. Nobody else is in it. Just you.

**Try it:** a reading corner, a tent, or headphones at your desk.

### the campfire

![the campfire](faces/places--the-campfire.svg)

A small circle with a few friends. Quiet enough to talk in.

**Try it:** three friends sharing one table for a project.

### the watering hole

![the watering hole](faces/places--the-watering-hole.svg)

Lots of people, showing each other what they know. You can join in, or just listen.

**Try it:** everyone showing the class something they made.

### the library

![the library](faces/places--the-library.svg)

Where we keep what we have worked out, so anyone can find it again. Look things up, and add what you know.

**Try it:** the word wall, or the box of instructions everyone adds to.

### the habitat

![the habitat](faces/places--the-habitat.svg)

The whole space that holds the other four inside it. Your classroom. Your home.

**Try it:** look around the room you are in. Where would a cave go? Where is the campfire?

## You can need a different place tomorrow

You are not one place. Nobody is.

You might need the cave in the morning and the campfire after lunch. You might need three different places before playtime. That is not you being difficult or unsettled. That is you using the room properly.

Nobody is going to score this, write it down, or tell you which place you should have picked. There is no right answer, because it is not that kind of question.

## When the place you need is not there

Sometimes you need a cave and the room has not got one. Sometimes you need a watering hole and there is nowhere to go.

That is not you getting it wrong. That is the room not being finished yet.

So say which place you need. Rooms can be changed — a cushion, a corner, a sign for a door, ten minutes somewhere quieter. Rooms get better when somebody notices what is missing and says so.

>> You are not the thing that needs fixing. The room is the thing that can change.

## For the grown-up reading this

Everything above this line is written for a child of about 7 to 11 to read, or to have read to them. Everything below it is for you.

**It is the same five places as the rest of this site, said smaller.** Nothing here is a different model, and nothing here is a simpler model for simpler people. The pictures are the deck's own Places cards, not a version drawn down for children.

**On the word.** The rest of this site calls these the five *zones*, and [Zone a room](rooms.html) still does. This page calls them *places*, because that is what they are — somewhere you can go — because it is the word the deck's own realm uses, and because a child can picture a place. If you move between the two pages, they are the same five things.

Introduce one place at a time, and let children name their own examples from the actual room. Their examples will be better than ours.

**Do not rank the places.** A day spent mostly in the cave is not a worse day than one spent at the campfire. It is a different need, met.

**Moving between places is the system working.** A child who wants three different places before lunch is reading their own state accurately and acting on it. Treat that as skill, not as restlessness.

**A place a child asks for and cannot find is information about the room.** It is not a request to manage, a behavior to redirect, or a one-off favor to grant. It is the room telling you what it is missing. Write it down and change the room. [Zone a room](rooms.html) is the tool for that, and the [implementation guidebook](implementation.html) is how to do it on any budget.

**These are not feelings, and they are not colors for moods.** A Cavendish place is somewhere a person can be. It describes the room, not the state of the child in it, and no child is ever *in* a colored zone — they are in a room that does or does not hold what they need. If you are used to a framework that sorts children into colored zones by how regulated they look, this is the opposite move. Nothing here sorts a child. Everything here sorts the room.

**Nothing is recorded.** No score, no chart on the wall with names on it, no log of who needed the cave and how often. A child telling you which place they need is telling you about the room, and the moment it becomes a record about them it has stopped being this.

## The tools, by their real names

Two things on this site do the jobs a classroom usually reaches for, and both already have names.

**[Cavendish Cards](deck.html)** — the deck. Pictures a person points at to show how they feel and what they need, with no reading required. The five cards on this page are its Places realm, so a child can point at the cave instead of having to read about it. Cards lie face-down until the person turns one up, and turning it up is how they say yes to sharing it. You can [print the whole deck](print.html) and cut it out.

**[Zone a room](rooms.html)** — a checklist a class or family fills in together. Does our room have a cave? A campfire spot? A watering hole? Tick what is already there, then pick one small change and make it.

The deck is not a feelings chart, and it is not a communication aid. If a child needs a way to communicate, they need [real AAC](not-aac.html) — these cards sit alongside it and never stand in for it. That holds at any age, and especially for children.

## Where the places come from

This page is adapted from Helen Edgar's *Zone Explorers*, made with Autistic Realms.

The cave, the campfire, and the watering hole are David Thornburg's learning-space metaphors, from *Campfires in Cyberspace* and *From the Campfire to the Holodeck*. The library and the habitat complete them. The whole model is [Cavendish Space](space.html), a Stimpunks Foundation project developed with Helen Edgar of Autistic Realms; the longer versions of this page are [What is a Cavendish Space?](space.html) and [Origin & lineage](origin.html).

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Dedicated to the public domain under [CC0 1.0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). Home: https://stimpunks.org/projects/cavendish-space-project/