"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood".
-Fred Rogers
"If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money".
-Abigail Van Buren
"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation".
-Plato
As a young child what I remember most about play is being outdoors.
I remember mashing mulberries to make soup, mixing dirt and water to make mud pies, building hideouts of sticks and fallen saplings, lifting logs to find salamanders and worms, chewing on a fresh birch twig, and laying in the grass to watch the clouds roll by.
I remember playing until dark and hating when my parents yelled out the door that it was time for me to come inside.
I remember sleeping under the stars with my friend on her trampoline.
I don't remember specific play toys. Just the mud, dirt, flowers, grass, berries, bowls, sticks and spoons.
The woods was my playroom. The leaves my carpet. There was no ceiling, no boundaries, no rules. I was allowed to be me, to have fun, to learn without realizing it.
Looking back, I remember the things I learned from those days. Not much stands out to me from days in a classroom. Too many kids today have no idea what that's like. They play things that were already made up by other people; video games, movies, TV, even board games. There's nothing like good, old-fashioned, original play. Do kids even know how to do it? To really play?
My hope is that I can send my kids out the door and that they play. Learn. Grow. I don't want them to stand there lost because there's not a power button on outside.
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