Giving Children Time to Play
Fall is a busy season as we return to school and settle into new schedules, routines, and rhythms. As our students gleefully begin the new school, teachers have prepared meaningful opportunities for them to PLAY as they develop relationships, expand their knowledge, and build new understandings.
Community Playthings published a blog this month by Lisa Murphy titled “It All Takes Time!” focused on developing essential lifelong skills through play. Here are a few of Murphy’s key points in her passionate plea to let children play:
Let’s get right to the heart of the matter: children need more time. Time to play, explore, think, daydream, imagine, and simply be children. They deserve better than being herded like cattle from one activity to the next all day long… Hard-and-fast, rigid daily schedules make me antsy. Why? Because out of one side of our mouth we say we want high levels of executive function and self-regulation skills and out of the other we insist on posting daily schedules that chop a child’s day up into twenty-minute time blocks. You can’t have the former if you insist on the latter.
Let me elaborate. One of the current hot topics in early childhood education is the development of both executive function (EF) skills and self-regulation skills. EF skills assist children in planning, decision-making, memory, flexible shifting from one task to another, and, among other things, managing feelings as well as unwanted thoughts and emotions… free play gives children time to discover their interests and tap into their creativity and that it is a “crucial element for building resilience,” which they will need to be happy, productive adults.
Children with high EF skills are collaborative, persistent, cooperative, flexible thinkers with high levels of self-regulation—and a predictor of high EF skills is (wait for it) long periods of free time where the children are able to direct their play and the choices they make.
The Partnership for 21st Century Learning (and dare I say common sense) tells us that these are the skills our children will need to “be ready” for the future:
adaptability
agility
attention to detail
collaboration
communication skills
coping skills
creativity
critical thinking
curiosity
flexibility
imagination
leadership
people skills
problem-solving
teamwork
Do you know where and when each and every one of those skills is being crafted, nurtured, developed, practiced, and mastered? When children are playing.
Bruno Bettelheim reminds us that “getting ready to play” can be developmentally more important than whatever ends up getting played out. Think about it. Figuring out who gets to use the red truck or who gets the favorite shoes, all the compromising, negotiating, bartering, badgering, turn-taking, and the putting of their own individual needs on pause in an effort to keep the play going are indicators of high levels of executive functioning and spot-on self-regulation skills. When we take this valuable time away from children, we deprive them of the opportunity to master the very skills we claim we want them to have.
When your child comes home from school today and you ask, “What did you do at school today?” Don’t be surprised when they proudly proclaim, “Play!” The teachers send home a Daily each day your child attends, and regardless of if they are individually featured, this is an incredible resource in discussing with your child all the fun play opportunities in the classroom and the friendships being fostered. We hope it offers you a small peek into their school day and encourage you to share it with your child as well!
Lisa Murphy’s full blog post can be found on Community Playthings website here: https://www.communityplaythings.com/resources/articles/2021/Kids-Need-Time?_cldee=c2JhbGxAcGlubmFjbGVwcmVzLm9yZw%3d%3d&recipientid=contact-1c94d6902dc748b88712a01927288528-e8c30bb61c8347a89dee10e1925972bb&esid=78902490-8e15-ec11-b6e6-00224808e305