Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.
-Kay Redfield Jamison
“The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health.”
As a child I can remember how my parents encouraged us to play all the time. “Go outside and play” my mother would say to us. Getting together with the neighbors and riding up and down the neighborhood on our bikes and playing throw back football with the boys was the best time of my life. I don’t recall it being girl games and boy games. We would all play together and have a great time. I can say that playing with the kids in my neighborhood built great social skills for me as an adult. Playing is an essential part of life. Children learn with and from one another in a caring community, and that’s true of moral as well as academic learning. Interdependence counts at least as much as independence, so it follows that practices that pit students against one another in some kind of competition, thereby undermining a feeling of community, are deliberately avoided.(Kohn) The child’s love of learning is intimately linked with a zest for play. Whether children are working on new physical skills, social relations, or cognitive content, they approach life with a playful spirit.(Almon)
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