My Connections To Play

"It is better to play than do nothing." -Confucius

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

These are just two of the many quotes that I feel summarizes what play represented for me in childhood. There was not a day where you did not catch me outside playing with my cousins. Play is the best way to discover a lot about a person. Confucius and Plato could not have said it better. It has been said that play is children's work. Children work hard at their play because they can make it up themselves. The best part about children's play is that they learn a great deal while having fun. I can recall a few of the play items I used to play with as a child.

I can remember it as if it was yesterday. I used to LOVE to jump rope. I cannot even remember why I stopped jump roping but it sure made my childhood a whole lot of fun!



My Big Wheel! I'm a big kid now! I used to think I was so cool riding down the street in my Big Wheel. Nobody could tell me anything and I was in control. I had fun racing with actual cars. I even had some scars from falling off my Big Wheel. This was my baby.

Franny was what I named her. My baby doll. I carried her everywhere with me. The store, the mall, when I took a bath, you name it. Franny was there.

It is so funny how easily I forgot about all the play items I admired as a child. My mom was always supporting play when I was younger. She prepared me to be road safe. She prepared me for walking and cycling independently by telling me and showing me from an early age how I can keep myself safe on and around roads. She also familiarized me with the neighborhood. We walked and cycled in the local area and she helped me to identify safer routes to play spaces and other places I needed to access independently in our community. There was not moment where my mom was not actively supporting play in my childhood. I thank her for that. The role of play in my childhood was huge. I do not I would be as sociable as I am without the chance to play with fellow peers of mine. Play gave me the opportunity to conquer my fears and to have fun. I would not trade that in for the world.

Play today is very different from the play in which I engaged as a child. Play is of central importance in a child’s life. Despite its central importance in children’s healthy development, play—in the creative, open-ended sense in which I use the term—is now seriously endangered in the United States and many other countries. It is being pushed out of children’s lives for a number of reasons. For one, children have become dependent on electronic entertainment: television, videos, and computers. Secondly, kindergarten programs in the U.S. focus so strongly on teaching literacy, numeracy, and other academic subjects that many children no longer have time to play in kindergarten. Thirdly, this academic approach to early learning is shifting downward. Three- and four-year-olds are now expected to engage in far more early writing and reading activities than ever before. This should not be a requirement for young children. Lastly, the amount of time spent in sports and other organized activities for young children has increased greatly in the past thirty years, beginning with pre-schoolers, so that children have little time for their own play activities. I hope that by some miracle we as educators can involve play into children's lives again. Depriving play from them is just going to affect them academically, socially, mentally, and emotionally. We do not want this to happen. We want to see the sparkle in children's eyes because they are having fun and learning.

I had such a great childhood mainly due to the fact that I was given the chance to be a kid. I did not have responsibilities or had to worry about school standards at such a young age. I was given the opportunity to have fun without any consequences. I just feel the U.S. along with several other countries has lost sight of what play represents in children's lives. No child should have to bear the thought of not having recess. That is just cruel and unusual punishment. I believe that even has we enter adulthood, play still has a significant role in our lives, especially if we have children of our own. We are all a kid at heart.