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posted March 17, 2013 11:47 PM            

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...the hummy rhythm of the children’s attention to their work.
Gurewitz Clemens
A two-year-old on the sandy beach with a pail and a shovel lives in joy, outside of time. He has the attention span of a giant. He will play, with or without your company, as long as you’ll let him.
A seven-year-old city child, at that same beach, lets himself hang out, observes people, birds, and water. Suddenly, without an external trigger, he gets up and sprints along the beach and into the water up to just the right height, stops, rests, considers, relaxes. To children, time is measured in units of joy.
From the moment they greet
the children in the morning, adults at a child care center
or kindergarten convey their attitude about how time is to be used. Without pressure, there’s time to say hello and ask how things are going. Courteous, relaxed interactions start a good day. Where time is organized rigidly and there’s never enough of it, staff and children collide. Children want to keep on building with blocks until they’ve finished what they’re building, and they resent having to tear down what they’ve built because it’s “cleanup time.” Respecting this, some programs choose to let structures remain—out of
the way of the cleaning staff—so building can continue tomorrow.
Waiting in line at the supermarket feels wasteful unless you play with the other people in line. So it is
in the early childhood classroom. If children have to wait, they will get impatient or angry—not emotions you’re trying to develop. Wise teachers thus arrange a fluid, responsive day with minimal waiting. In Reggio Emilia, Italy, children and staff work together on a project for as long as eight or ten weeks, returning to it most days, as if they had all the time
in the world. A great deal can be accomplished by children working on this kind of extended timeline, and these children’s ability to understand how the world works changes because mindful time was invested in important exploration.
A good classroom will flow. Teachers will have a general
idea of a schedule, but respond intuitively to the hummy rhythm of the children’s attention to their work. Like good parents and good friends, good teachers tune in to those they care for, and promote a flowing, peaceful use of time

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posted March 17, 2013 11:48 PM            

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...bringing children into a space of their unique knowing and understanding.
Imagination
Richard Lewis
Play is an act of imagining. When children go outside to play—running, skipping, jumping—what is activated is
a different form of knowing. It is a way of believing that allows children, if they wish, to run as fast as the wind or jump as high as the clouds, becoming, in an instant, a part of the exuberance and playfulness of nature itself.
In more solitary forms of play—be it a child playing in a sandbox, dressing up, or having
a conversation with a doll—the imagination is now, through
its own resources, at play. It is creating, pretending, performing, and bringing children into a space of their unique knowing and understanding.
Even our own adult imagining
is a form of play. Haven’t we all noticed that when we imagine, dream and reality, time and space, feeling and thought begin to intertwine, blending components that reflect who we are and how we interpret the wondrously complex world around us?
For the child, both play and imagining are instinctive capacities. They are not only crucial to a child’s sense of well- being, but also, if encouraged and supported, the path to envisioning possibilities, discovering new ideas, enlarging experience, and questioning and expressing the delicate boundaries of the known and the unknown.
Perhaps it is part of the genius
of childhood to integrate play and imagining into one seamless activity. A way in which the life
of our minds and our bodies are in dialogue with each other. Or, as one child, Maggi, said to me: “When I play it feels like you can’t fall down. And it feels like the stars are carrying me.”

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posted March 17, 2013 11:48 PM            

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...nothing lights up a child’s brain like play.
Brain Research
– Stuart Brown, MD
(founder of National Institute for Play)
A close look at young children worldwide reveals the spontaneous whole- self involvement of their bodies, minds and spirits in the joyful pursuit of play. Something deep within prompts them to enjoy the tug of gravity and urges
them to move, chase each other, wrestle and squeal with delight— and to find pleasure through exploration and tinkering with objects around them, making toys or building fantasy forts
and hiding places.
In studying what occurs in the brain during play, researchers into animal play have provided evidence of play-brain relationships that also apply to humans. They have discovered that play arises from areas of the “ancient” brain (that all mammals possess) that are organized for survival, and they flow “upward” into higher centers, activating interaction with the environment. This flow is similar in humans and involves our hands, which are so richly connected with our brains, and a primary way we interact with the world. As kids play with blocks, fashion mud pies, and throw balls, they are constantly fertilizing neural growth and integrating complex areas that the natural world offers.
Immersion in the natural world is a central aspect of healthy child’s play. High-tech industries such as NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have found that their best overall problem solvers were master tinkerers in their youth. They have even altered their hiring policy to give high priority to this play background information.
In childhood play, it is a safe assumption that kids need more than a two-dimensional screen to gain competency. Children need free, hands-on play that is kid-organized, to maximize their potential. Nothing lights up a child’s brain like play.

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posted March 17, 2013 11:48 PM            

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...play works, but is seriously endangered in today’s schools.

Research & Current Trends
– Joan Almon & Edward Miller
(Alliance for Childhood)
The vital importance of play in a young child’s development has been shown in study after study going back more than
half a century. Nevertheless, early childhood education
has in recent years become increasingly focused on teaching literacy and other academic skills, in part because of popular misconceptions about play being a waste of time.
Three recent university studies of public kindergartens, sponsored by the Alliance for Childhood, provide evidence of how far this trend has gone. A survey of 254 teachers in New York and Los Angeles showed that their full- day kindergartens devoted two to three hours per day teaching literacy and math and preparing students for or giving them standardized tests. Play with blocks, sand, or water is rare. Most kindergarteners get 30 minutes or less to play per day; many have no playtime at all.
Policymakers and school administrators push early academics as a way to give children a competitive edge in a global economy, and to help children from low-income backgrounds catch up with their middle-class peers. But
those arguments are based on assumptions not supported by well-designed research. The federal government has invested heavily in research on early literacy, with disappointing results. The federal Reading
First program, for example, significantly increased didactic, phonics-heavy reading instruction but had no effect on reading comprehension scores. Intensive test-driven programs may produce short-term gains in scores, but long-term research indicates that these gains fade away. Studies of Germany’s experiment with academic kindergartens showed that play-based early education produced better results in reading and math, social and emotional adjustment, creativity, intelligence, oral expression, and “industry.”
The research base on early education is clear: play works, but is seriously endangered in today’s schools.

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posted March 17, 2013 11:49 PM            

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... balancing one block atop another, they are registering principles of physics and support.
Building Blocks for Learning
– Katrina Ferrara, BA
– Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, PhD – Roberta M. Golinkoff, PhD
“Creating environments where children can learn through play is not a simple thing to do consistently and well...The role of the adult is critical...The adult designs an environment with hands-on, concrete materials that encourage exploration, discovery, manipulation and active engagement of children.”
Blocks. Seemingly simple, they actually offer children
an entire classroom’s worth of opportunities for mathematical and spatial learning.

As children pick up and feel
the rigid angles and smooth curves of wooden squares,
circles, and triangles, they are learning the fundamentals of shape and proportion. When they distinguish the green block from the red, they refine their ability to note patterns and compare features. And when they build towers by masterfully balancing one block atop another, they are registering principles of physics and support.
Research suggests that four and five year-olds given 15 minutes
of free play will spend a third
of this time engaged in spatial, mathematical, and architectural activities! Studies also show that this kind of play, especially with blocks, helps children discover principles such as symmetry and geometry and sets the stage for more advanced skills used later in mathematics and geography.
Given their utility as a creative medium, a foundation for learning, and a basis for fun interaction between parents and children, blocks are one of the most versatile and rewarding items in the toy box. No wonder the American Academy of Pediatrics recognized blocks as among the “true toys” that should be valued in our homes and schools.

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posted March 17, 2013 11:49 PM            

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...we learn what we do.
Active Learning
– Larry Schweinhart, PhD (HighScope)
Active learning is the way we all learn. From our beginnings, our brains are constantly growing, connecting their synapses in new ways
and into increasingly complex structures. At birth, we first learn to make sense of booming, buzzing confusion. We learn from what we see, feel, touch, taste, smell, and do. We develop the special human abilities of language-speaking, listening, reading, writing, and discovering meaning. These new abilities enrich our lives with whole new realms of knowledge, but they never replace our immediate world of senses and activities. We learn what we do.
When we make a plan, we are learning how to work toward objectives. When we carry out a plan, we are learning how
to follow through on what we
say. When we review the plan afterwards, we are learning how to take responsibility. When children do what we tell them, they are learning how to do what we say. When we ask them what they want to do and they do it, they are learning how to take initiative.
The HighScope Educational Research Foundation conducted a long-term follow-up study of three types of preschool education: direct instruction, traditional nursery school, and HighScope’s active participatory curriculum. Direct instruction teachers taught children lessons and how to give the right answers. Traditional nursery school teachers let children do what they wanted and followed their lead. Teachers in the active participatory program had children plan, do, and review their own activities and supported them in these activities. All three groups of children became better prepared for school, but the two more child-led approaches seemed to better prepare children for life—with fewer emotional problems and fewer crimes committed as teens.
Children engaged in active learning learned not just from the lesson content, but also from the educational activities themselves.

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posted March 17, 2013 11:49 PM            

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...outside—all they need is time, playmates, and permission.
– Rachel Grob, MA, PhD (Sarah Lawrence College)
Think back to when you were a child.
Did you crave the outdoors? Did you have a favorite spot to play—a tree, a stream, a rocky crevice or vacant lot? Did you have a special place to hide, where you could watch without being seen and let your imagination run free? Did you resist being called back inside, wanting to swing one more minute with your face tilted up to the darkening sky or to finish a last exhilarating game on the street?
Because of our own experiences, many of us already know and feel the benefits of play in natural settings. Research corroborating our firsthand perceptions comes as no surprise, but it helps us understand why outdoor play is so essential. One reason is
that nature offers unparalleled opportunities for exploration and experimentation. As landscape architect Samuel Nicholson put it, “In any environment, both
the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it.”
The number and kinds of “variables” outdoors are endless: plants, animals, insects, water, sand, dirt, dust, hills, holes—
all of these are fascinating,
and many change over time, constantly revitalized as material for children’s play. Nature is
the very best place for children to find “loose parts”—that is, material for play that can be moved around and used in many ways. Pieces of wood can make
a fort or a miniature world; rocks can serve equally well as pretend people or pretend food in an imaginary game; dirt can be sculpted into a palace for
ants or dug to create a hole for buried treasure. The open-ended characteristics of the natural world excite play far richer than what children will ever find in manufactured toys that require them only to push buttons or follow pre-set rules.
In addition, the gross motor play children need to become physically adept emerges spontaneously and joyfully in the outdoors. The natural world offers room to run, irresistible opportunities to climb, uneven terrain to be negotiated. Most children need no coaxing
or coaching to burn calories outside—all they need is time, playmates, and permission from adults to explore what their bodies can do. As landscape architect Robin Moore writes, “The indeterminacy of rough ground allows it to become a play-partner, like other
forms of creative partnership: actress-audience, potter-clay, photographer-subject, painter- canvas. The exploring/creating child is...using the landscape as a medium for understanding the world by continually destructing/ reconstructing it.”
Nature offers children not
just physical room to play, but mental and emotional room as well. The “secret spaces” young people need for private reflection and growth can be found in abundance, and children will use their time outdoors to nurture contemplative as well as active forms of playfulness. Their ability to relate creatively and peacefully with others expands in nature too; researchers have found decreased incidents of aggression and increased imaginative play and creative social interactions in environments converted from asphalt to an “environmental yard” with ponds, gardens, a meadow, and trees.
Features of the natural world
children explore with their senses by day, they play with in their dreams at night, and turn into poetry when they wake.
Jonah – by Talia Grob Stewart (age 9)

When I remember my brother Jonah I picture him on the back of a whale.
It’s raining but Jonah doesn’t care because he’s already wet from diving into the water and coming up again like Jonah and the whale, his hands clutching the whale’s neck.
I picture Jonah on the top of a mountain his hands on either side, and his fingers spread out wide, with his open jacket flailing behind him.
When I picture Jonah I picture him on the back of his favorite horse named Yawer, no saddle, no pommel, his hands grasping Yawar’s mane.

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posted March 17, 2013 11:49 PM            

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.a sense of power, control, and mastery of their own learning.
Open-ended and Creative Play
– Francis Wardle, PhD
I observed some young girls helping their mothers wash clothes in the stream. The Maya living in the highlands of Guatemala care for their children while engaging in work—the boys with the men, the girls with the women. On this occasion, a small group of three to five-year-old girls
was helping their mothers. However, they soon got bored, so they started to invent a game by tossing the small pieces of soap to each other, and trying
to catch the slippery objects. They delighted in the fun of
a game that required great concentration, physical agility, and creativity! This game continued for a considerable length of time as the girls found different ways to enjoy this activity. The mothers seemed quite content to watch them have fun playing in the stream. It seems to me these girls were doing many things, including:
• Creating play activities to eliminate boredom;
• Creatively adapting everyday objects to play with;
• Imposing new meanings and uses on familiar objects and the environment;
• Enjoying themselves without needing to use expensive, technological or educational toys;
• Finding a creative way to have fun and enjoy each other’s company. 
Open-ended play materials are those that offer children many ways to engage with them. For example, children can play with sand, water, or clay in a variety of ways. In creative play, children use objects and toys to create stories, build constructions, and engage in a fantasy world. The use of materials in flexible and creative ways teaches children to be flexible and creative thinkers with abstract ideas and concepts. 
The value of open-ended and creative play is that it enables children to explore a variety
of creative uses of common materials and environments, challenges conventional ways to use materials, and gives children a sense of power, control, and mastery of their own learning.

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posted March 17, 2013 11:50 PM            

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Bibliography
Crain, W. “Animal Dreams,” ENCOUNTER: Education for Meaning and Social Justice, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2003.
Elkind, D. The Power of Play: Learning What Comes Naturally, Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2007.
Ginsberg, H. “Mathematical Play and Playful Mathematics: A Guide for Early Education.” Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children’s Cognitive and Social- Emotional Growth, D. Singer, R. M. Golinkoff, & K. Hirsh- Pasek (Eds.), New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Ginsburg, K. & committee. “The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds,” Pediatrics, Vol. 119, No. 1, 2007.
Goodenough, E. (Ed.) Secret Spaces of Childhood, Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 2003.
Hewes, J. Several Perspectives on Children’s Play: Scientific Reflections for Practitioners, Tom Jambor & Jan Van Gils (Eds.) Philadelphia: Garant, 2007.
Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Michnick Golinkoff, R. & Berk, L.E.
& Singer, D.G. A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Johnson, J. E., Christie, J. F., & Wardle, F. Play, Development and Early Education, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2005.
Miller, Edward & Almon, Joan. Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School, College Park: Alliance for Childhood, 2009.
Moore, R.C. & Wong, H.H. Natural Learning: The Life History of an Environmental Schoolyard, Berkeley: MIG Communications, 1997.
Nabhan, G.P. & Trimble, S. The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places, Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.
Ness, D. & Farenga, S. J. Knowledge Under Construction: The Importance of Play in Developing Children’s Spatial and Geometric Thinking, New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007.
Nicholson, S. “How Not to Cheat Children: The Theory of Loose Parts,” Landscape Architecture, Vol. 62, 1968.
Schweinhart, L. J., Montie, J., Xiang, Z. Barnett, W. S., Belfield, C. R., & Nores, M. Lifetime Effects: The HighScope Perry Preschool Study through Age 40, Ypsilanti:
HighScope Press, 2005.
Schweinhart, L. J. & Weikart, D. P. Lasting Differences: The HighScope Preschool Curriculum Comparison Study through Age 23, Ypsilanti: HighScope Press, 1997.
Sobel, D. Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators, Portland: Stenhouse Publishers, 2008.
Wardle, F. Introduction To Early Childhood Education: A Multidimensional Approach To Child-Centered Care And Learning, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2003.
Further Reading:
Brown, S. & Vaughan, C. Play, How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul,
New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2009.
Grob, R. (forthcoming).Testing Baby: The Transformation of Newborn Screening, Parenting and Policymaking, Rutgers University Press.
Levin, D. E. & Kilbourne, J. So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood & What Parents Can Do To Protect Their Kids, New York: Ballantine Books, 2008.
Linn, S. The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World, New York: The New Press, 2008.
Louv, R. Last Child in the Woods, Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2006.
Organizations
Alliance for Childhood promotes policies and practices that support children’s healthy development, love of learning, and joy in living. Their public education campaigns bring to light both the promise and the vulnerability of childhood. They act for the sake of the children themselves and for a more just, democratic, and ecologically responsible future. Visit the website at www.allianceforchildhood.org.
Playing For Keeps: Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) adopted Playing for Keeps as a leadership initiative in April 2008. Play has always been at the core of ACM’s work and that of its members. Yet play opportunities for young children are diminishing, drawing increased concern from educators, parents, and the general public. Promoting the necessity of play and advocating that communities and families make play a daily habit has become more important than ever. Learn more at http://www.childrensmuseums. org/programs/playingforkeeps.htm.
International Play Association, USA (IPA/USA) is the national affiliate of IPA World, an international non- governmental organization, founded in Denmark in
1961. The purpose of the IPA is to protect, preserve, and promote the child’s right to play. Specific interests include environments for play emphasizing universal access, leisure time facilities, programs that develop the whole child, play leadership training, toys, and play materials. Check out the website: www.ipausa.org.

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posted March 18, 2013 01:36 PM            

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posted April 08, 2013 12:51 AM            

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http://pinterest.com/sunchild23/kids/

A collection of child related pins.

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