PLAY - That's What I'm Talking About!

Jerry Becker (Southern IL University) passed on a blog that Diane Ravitch posted this month. Look at all those amazing people and how they cherished play! And, friends, that’s why I worry about what we are doing to children’s brains with the academic push and technology. For thousands and thousands of years the brain has naturally developed through play and movement and oral language and games and hands-on materials and interacting with others and music and exploring – what’s going to happen when it just sits there and taps and swipes????? Play is critical to children’s intellectual development, as well as their social, emotional, and physical development. They were designed to PLAY!
                           
There is one quote from the Little Price that I would add to the list:

“All grown-ups were once children…but only few of them remember it.”

I’d like the administrators who think PLAY and FUN should be replaced with RIGOR and INSTRUCTIONAL TIME could remember how they loved to play as children. Recess was probably their favorite time of day. What are we doing? What are we doing????

TEN QUOTES ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY

"Play is the work of the child." - Maria Montessori

"Play is the highest form of research." - Albert Einstein

"It is a happy talent to know how to play." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning." - Mr. Rogers

"The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery." - Erik H. Erikson

"Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn." - O. Fred Donaldson

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct." - Carl Jung

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw

"Do not keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play." - Plato

"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood." - Fred Rogers
I can’t hold back the ocean, but what I can try to do in my own small way is to give you ideas that will keep a small token of play and fun in your classroom. We will (and I quote Winston Churchill) “never, ever ever ever ever give up.”