My Connections to Play

“Play energizes us and enlivens us. It eases our burdens. It renews our natural sense of optimism and opens us up to new possibilities.”

~Stuart Brown, MD

“Play, while it cannot change the external realities of children’s lives, can be a vehicle for children to explore and enjoy their differences and similarities and to create, even for a brief time, a more just world where everyone is an equal and valued participant.”

~Patricia G. Ramsey

“As astronauts and space travelers children puzzle over the future; as dinosaurs and princesses they unearth the past. As weather reporters and restaurant workers they make sense of reality; as monsters and gremlins they make sense of the unreal.”

~Gretchen Owocki

I am a big believer in the importance of play and a child’s development. When I was reading the article, The vital role of play in early childhood education, a rush of excitement and disappointment ran through me. One sentence in particle stood out, “School children no longer have the freedom to explore woods and fields and find their own special places. Physical education and recess are being eliminated; new schools are built without playgrounds. Informal neighborhood ball games are a thing of the past, as children are herded into athletic leagues from age five on” (Almon, 2002). As a young child I remember spending hours exploring the woods around my house and at my school. My friends and I would pretend to be deer, bunnies, lost settlers and more. We would build forts and hike around. We spent hours outside during the summer and even in the winters in the frozen snow. It’s sad that children are no longer able to enjoy the same fun things we did growing up. All though safety is partly to blame, it’s just not as safe for children to run around freely as they once did, I also think that busy schedules play a role. Many children come from single family homes and from homes where both parents work. Parents are too tired to engage or too busy going from place to place. Parents use to encourage their children to go play and now they rely heavily on the use of technology, which has also become an issue. Don’t get me wrong, technology can be a good thing when used appropriately, but too often these days it’s not. Children sit in front of the TV, video games and the computer for hours. Children are not as active and not as imaginative as kids use to be. There is a constant struggle to get PE in the schools; children are becoming lazy and inactive. I remember having PE every day in school, now children are lucky to have it once a week. Without play children lack an imagination. They find learning tedious and difficult rather something fun and exciting and something that is only done when adults or technology teach them rather than through play. Growing up I didn’t need much to play. Of course my siblings were a big role in helping learn through play, but I was also able to play independently as well. Sometimes we would pretend to work at a post office and all we needed was a piece of paper and a pen. We spend all day outside sending letters back and forth. Sometimes we pretended to we lived in the wilderness and we would build forts out of sticks in the woods. We would go exploring, hiking through the fields and trees, stopping to watch deer and bunnies as they ate. Other times we would play catch or pickle with a ball and glove. When we grew hot or cold we would rush inside for a drink and head to the basement to continue playing school, house with our Cabbage Patch Dolls or build elaborate houses for our Barbies and G.I Joe Dolls.

Almon, K. (2002). The vital role of play in early childhood education. Gateways, 43. Retrieved from http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/GW43almon.pdf