My Connections to Play

                                 PLAY IS A CHILD’S WORK. PLAY CREATES THOUGHT!

 “When you asked me what I did in school today and I say, 'I just played.' Please don’t misunderstand me. For you see, I am learning as I play. I am learning to enjoy and be successful in my work. Today I am a child and my work is play.”    Anita Wadley, 1974.

I believe that play enhances language development, social competence, creativity, imagination, and thinking skills and see how play is the chief vehicle for the development of imagination and intelligence.  It needs to be self motivated, valued by the player, freely chosen and engaging.

As a child, and as a parent I have loved playing games with my family.  Whether it be a game night with extended family or a simple game of cards with my parents I love games. I also remember playing outside all the time.  Whether it was creating a fort, riding bikes or playing kick ball we played outside with friends, family and neighbors.  We knew we had to come in for dinner as a family but would go right back out after for more play time.  I also really enjoyed playing with other children, whether it be helping in the church nursery or babysitting around the neighborhood I have fun playing with children.  I think there were less demands placed on children when we were young, it was expected that we would have responsibililties yes, but one major one was to play.  My parents took time to play games with me and encourage good old fashioned outside play by letting be be creative.  I would use materials in many different ways depending on my elaborate life of the day.  I enjoyed having babysitters over that would bring fun and new things to play with and so when I became old enough I too brought a treasure bag along with me when I babysat.  As I continued to work with children I would bring fun game ideas from my childhood into the classroom and saw how that slowly changed.  In our busy society we are expected to go, go, go and do, do, do.  To me that means there is pressure for children to do their best at everything (not just enjoy the activity and process) and be involved in as many activities as they can.  There is much more expected out of children at school today and the time it takes outside of school to be prepared to be a successful student takes time away from play.  Add that to the pull of electronics and we have no chance.  We take my children to our cabin up North, play fun car games on the way and talk about what our weekend is going to be like.  We get there and it takes quite a while for my children to remember how to play outside.  They continuously ask if we can have a TV in the bedroom at the cabin (NO!) or can they bring their computers and playstation along too (NO!).  After encouragement and brainstorming with them to come up with ideas of things to do outside, I almost will resort to additional chores if I hear the word BORED one more time.  I think it is sad the lack of creative, imaginative play skills our children have today and think it is important to remember that just because their agendas may be different than ours, does not mean they are not benefitting greatly from good old fashioned play.