My Connections to Play

Barbie was a major toy for me in childhood. Playing barbies was so creative for me and I acted out my world through Barbies...I can remember having fashion shows, playing house, school, work, and much more! I had the car, dream house, and horses. My Barbie world was amazing and very extravagant!

I have very fond memories of spending a lot of time with friends playing house, dressing up, and creating our own world that we spent numerous hours being creative in!



Playing outdoors was a major part of my childhood!



Our summers were spent exploring and having fun!

I can recall many times when we stayed outside until the sun was setting!



My grandmother had a preschool where I spend a great deal of time at after school and through my summers. She believe very strongly in play and free exploration.  I have many great memories of playtime as a child.  In my family, we were encouraged to explore our world.  I can remember playing outdoors for hours and hours. We lived across from my grade school and played a lot at the school playground. We rode bikes all around our neighborhoods and often times many many blocks away to friends houses! Play for me was so natural that I didn't ever really think about what we were doing as a child.  Now that I am an adult, I believe my creativity, patience, loving, and caring nature really reflects back to my childhood and many of the life skills that I developed through my explorations as a child.

It saddens me that our children today are not able to experience the same type of free play that we had as children whether it is because of safety or lack of knowledge. I have 3 young boys now and none of them are allowed to go outside without me (unlike my own childhood). I think this has a negative impact on their physical, social/emotional, and creative development! My hope for my own children would be to give them the space and freedom to create memories of their own childhood without being dependent upon the material things such as TV, video games, movies, and computers. I want them to have creative time to explore as I did as a child!

I have included some beautiful quotes below in regards to children and play along with the website that I found them at. Enjoy...and remember, even as an adult, we can still get down on the ground, dress-up, get dirty just for fun, and play as if we were 6 years old again! I do not do it near as much or often as I could, but every time I really let loose and play with my children, it is very rewarding, relaxing, and I know it means a lot to my children!

What They Say About Play:

Quotable quotes about play and other pertinent topics

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22929/play-quotes

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher, poet, essayist

Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning....They have to play with what they know to be true in order to find out more, and then they can use what they learn in new forms of play.

--Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

It is becoming increasingly clear through research on the brain as well as in other areas of study, that childhood need play. Play acts as a forward feed mechanism into courageous, creative, rigorous thinking in adulthood.

--Tina Bruce, Professor, London Metropolitan University

“When kids play, they remember. They may not be aware they are learning, but they sure are aware they are having fun. When you have a good belly laugh with your siblings or parents or friends, that stays with you. And the great thing is that is comes so naturally…if we only let it.”

--Rebecca Krook, play facilitator for kids with disabilities

Play is a major avenue for learning to manage anxiety. It gives the child a safe space where she can experiment at will, suspending the rules and constraints of physical and social reality. In play, the child becomes master rather than subject.... Play allows the child to transcend passivity and to become the active doer of what happens around her.

--Alicia F. Lieberman, author, The Emotional Life -- of the Toddler

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.

--Roger von Oech, President, Creative Think

Play for young children is not recreation activity,... It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity.... Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.

--James L. Hymes, Jr., child development specialist, author

It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.

--Leo Buscaglia, author, educator

Play permits the child to resolve in symbolic form unsolved problems of the past and to cope directly or symbolically with present concerns. It is also his most significant tool for preparing himself for the future and its tasks.

--Bruno Bettelheim, child psychologist

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

--Plato, Greek philosopher

Close observation of children at play suggests that they find out about the world in the same way as scientists find out about new phenomena and test new ideas. Young children may not be able to verbalize new ideas forming in their heads, but they may still apply similar processes to scientists. During this exploration, all the senses are used to observe and draw conclusions about objects and events through simple, if crude, scientific investigations.

--Judith Roden, Lecturer, Canterbury Christ Church University College

Adults who criticize teachers for allowing children to play are unaware that play is the principal means of learning in early childhood. It is the way through which children reconcile their inner lives with external reality. In play, children gradually develop concepts of causal relationships, the power to discriminate, to make judgments, to analyze and synthesize, to imagine and to formulate. Children become absorbed in their play and the satisfaction of bringing it to a satisfactory conclusion fixes habits of concentration which can be transferred to other learning.’

­­BASS Early Years Advisory Team

“It is in playing, and perhaps only in playing, that the child is free to be creative.”

--D.W. Winnicott

Today’s young children are controlled by the expectations, schedules, whims, and rules of adults. Play in the only time they can take control of their world.

--Sheila G. Flaxman

Playing reduces stress, improves life, and increases creativity. Who doesn’t want that?

--Stevanne Auerbach, Dr. Toy

If you came and you found a strange man... teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you'd kick him right out of the house, but here you are; you come in and the TV is on, and you don't think twice about it.

--Professor Jerome Singer, Yale University