I would like to share an incident that occurred just this week!
My dad is a pastor and every summer my parents travel to different worship conferences. This year it was held in South Carolina. My daughter and I went over to join them for one night. After our arrival my dad wanted to show me the inside waterfall from the glass elevator. Keep in mind my dad is 74 years old. We proceeded to the elevator and no one else was around at the time. We get on the elevator and we go to the first floor, then up to the fourth floor and during this time we are looking down at the waterfall trying to decide which floor had the best view. It was so much fun. We would ride up and down laughing and engaged in the moment. When we returned to the room my mom asked where we had been. I simply replied, “Playing”. My point is you are never too old to be engaged in some type of play.
Play was a positive part of my life. During my generation we were encouraged to go outside to play and we did happily. We would stay out all day and play with neighborhood friends. We felt safe in our neighborhood and everyone knew everyone. Through this interaction we formed lifelong friendships. We learned to solve our problems and work out game rules amongst ourselves, and parents were close by for remediation when needed.
I have fond memories of learning to ride my bike without training wheels. My dad would take off one wheel then the other. I still ride my bike and I enjoy the inner peace I feel and relation.
Unlike the children of today I experienced a childhood full of fun outdoor activities engaged in neighborhood games, or long afternoons of sitting under the big oak tree dressing Barbie’s with girlfriends. It is no longer safe for children to roam their neighborhoods engaging in social and physical activities. I had an opportunity to be a child and explore my imagination and creativity through my experiences.
Through pretend play I developed social skills by using the Barbie’s to communicate, acting out my own prior social experiences. As I grew older I learn to scaffold from these pretend play days. If children of today had these same opportunities it would perhaps eliminate possible future behavior issues.
I want to share these two quotes, because I believe play has no limits.
“The true object of all human life is play”.
G. K. Chesterton British author 1874–1936
“Those who play rarely become brittle in the face of stress or lose the healing capacity for humor”.
Stuart Brown, MD Contemporary American psychiatrist
Reflection
I believe play is a life learned innate characteristic for all humans. We experience some type of play throughout our entire life and play has no age limits. Play can be described as imagination, creativity, fun, laughter, interaction with others, or sometimes just alone. It can be physical or it can be engaging with cognitive challenges. Sometimes a type of object will help guide our play encouraging the development of social skills.
I’m troubled and an advocate for play. How do we as educators challenge a world of technology? Neighborhoods that is no longer for safe play? And very little home support? My generation has been long gone. Stay home moms are rare. My mom and most all the neighbors mom’s stayed home. Our neighborhoods are no longer filled with laughter from the children playing hop scotch on the sidewalk, or boys racing by on their bicycles. As we have all witnessed children now prefer to stay inside the comfort zone playing video games and chatting on line.
Go outside “Are you kidding”? Not only are they missing the opportunity to develop socially, but why do you think so many of our children of today have various illnesses due to poor diets and lack of exercise. As a dear friend of mine would say “HELLO”.
This is perhaps one of my strongest experiences that I bring as a new older teacher. Through life experiences I understand every theory and concept of play and how important it is for us to try to incorporate play in addition to the standards. We have to get creative with our lesson planning.
Resources
Quotes retrieved July 22, 2011. http://www.thestrong.org/about-play/play-quotes
Clipart retrieved July 22, 2011. http://classroomclipart.com/cgi bin/kids/imageFolio.cgi?img=0&bool=phrase&cat=all&search=bicycle
http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-images/children-riding-bicycles.html
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