CreativePlay Plus: Ideas in Play and Child Development

April showers bring May flowers, but how do you help keep your kids playing creatively when it is raining outside? Mommy blogger Stephanie from Mommy Poppins® suggest pitching a tent in your living room for a good old fashion Living Room Camp Out. We love this activity because it helps your kids think outside of the box by encouraging them to:

• Turn off the electricity (including the TV and phones) and turn on the flash lights
• Tell ghost stories and sing songs around the “camp fire”
• Make animal shadows on the wall
• Go on a scavenger hunt or “nature watch” out the window
• Make indoor camp fire s’mores (with assistance from an adult of course)

Best of all, you are able to incorporate creative play with your kids even on a rainy day!

Most children are naturally delighted and excited by the discoveries they make about their world. The playful stance that children tend to take early on as youngsters is likely one of the reasons children seem propelled toward greater curiosity and novelty seeking. Research supports associations between playfulness with many positive characteristics like:

• Creativity
• Humorousness
• Emotional expressiveness
• Curiosity
• Openness
• Communicativeness

These findings suggest that children who are more playful may be further effective and efficient at dealing with problems. Also, children who learn in a more playful learning environment may be extra willing to try new things and engage in a task. Consider our previous post about Sir Ken Robinson’s claim that most educational school systems “kill creativity.” Perhaps promoting and modeling a playful way of teaching and learning may support older children to be just as excited about learning as they were when they were youngsters.

Undoubtedly an important aspect of child development is a child’s ability to be playful. No one knew this better than Dr. Seuss who said:

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, which is what I do. And that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.”

To be playful means to have a flexible understanding and approach to life. It also means having the ability to make an experience more joyful and entertaining. If you have a child, you understand that most children inherently have this gift to make a lot of situations fun when given the opportunity. Even something as simple as walking from the car to the front door could mean a chance to skip, twirl, fly, and buzz all the way home.  We write a lot about the importance of giving children time to play, but having a playful disposition may be just as important as the act of playing itself. One way to help your child be playful: reading books by creative writers like Dr. Seuss. Another way, be a playful parent! That way, when they come up against a boring or scary situation they have the freedom to escape into their imagination and make light of some of life’s tedious tasks.

Most parents will agree that mathematical skills are big deal.  So what do you do when your child doesn’t seem interested in numbers? Try this clever number match game from mommy blogger Allison at No Time For Flash Cards.  What we like about this game is that you can adjust it to be more or less challenging for kids depending on their development level.  The best part is you only need colored construction paper and a marker to get your math magicians learning!

Educational systems that are focused on traditional learning, like language arts and math, do not give children struggling in these areas a chance to learn other potential strengths. Children who have strengths in music, dance, theater, and art aren’t necessarily given opportunities during the school day to hone their skills. Most importantly, these children are lacking opportunities to feel good about themselves in ways that arts education can provide. Imagine not having at least a little time during the day to do something you are good at or express yourself in a way you feel comfortable. For children who struggle in traditional classrooms it could be a constant reminder that they are not “good enough.”

Something to consider- think about what arts education really provides. Is it really just downtime during the school day for children to do craft projects or take music lessons? I argue that it’s not.

• Arts education can be a way for children to process, reflect, and organize content in a way that is perhaps more meaningful than traditional learning.
• Arts education also helps children practice higher level thinking like: analysis of information, problem solving, and execution of ideas while also expressing their selves.
• For example, asking a child to make a bird and nest out of clay requires the child to recall a mental picture of what that means to them, attempt to represent this image, and also learn to manage challenges along the way, like birds have feathers but I’m working with clay and not feathers.

Arts education is an important part of school and unfortunately it seems to be less valued than traditional academics.  In what ways does your child’s school allow your child to explore non-traditional academic subjects? Are there things you do at home or extracurricular activities you and your child are involved in to help supplement traditional learning?

The social and cognitive benefits of recess and free play are too important to be ignored. During recess children learn valuable social skills like learning to negotiate with peers in order to keep playing with them.

“I want to play on the monkey bars too.  How about we take turns?”

“You got to choose 4-square yesterday, today let’s play tag, okay?”

“Come play with us! We need more people to play kickball! It will be fun!”

Recess also gives children opportunities to become comfortable with deciding how they want to spend their free time and who they want to spend their time with.

The argument that physical education is a good substitute for recess is not adequately supported. The instructional nature and highly structured time found in physical education classes does not allow children the same sort of free time to explore, be creative, or control how they spend their time with peers, on their terms. Physical education also does not give them the time to practice sophisticated ways to compromise and resolve conflicts.

Dr. Anthony Pelligrini has studied important questions like, does what children do on the playground predict school achievement? In fact, Dr. Pelligrini found that the behavioral measures he developed to observe children at recess actually predicted first grade achievement better than kindergarten test scores.  Meaning, playground behaviors should be considered an important part of child development that could determine academic success of children early on in child education.

How do you feel about the amount of free-play time your children gets at school? Do you agree that play could potentially promote academic success?

Dr. Anthony Pelligrini is a notable scholar of recess and the education system. According to him, recess is disappearing because school administrators are more concerned with increasing instructional time and claim that recess promotes bullying and aggressive behaviors.

The argument that recess is not as developmentally important as instructional time is not well founded. We know from extensive research, that children who are asked to perform a school task are significantly more attentive after recess than when they are deprived of a break. (See our previous posts, A breath of fresh air and More than just a walk in the park)

Moreover, the argument that recess promotes negative interactions between children is also not supported. In a cross-cultural study, conducted by Pelligrini, they found that less than 2% of behaviors observed on playgrounds are physically or verbally aggressive. Additionally, with adequate adult supervision, this rate becomes even lower. We also know that children who are bullied are also bullied at lunch, on buses, in bathrooms, just about anywhere where children are not well monitored by adults. In actuality, lack of adult supervision may more likely be the culprit in creating opportunities for children to be aggressive.

How much time does your school district allot for recess or free play periods? Are your children monitored well during recess? What do you think of this argument? Do you think children are bullied more on the playground than any other setting at school?

Playday is an annual event in the UK that celebrates children’s right to play. On Playday thousands of children and communities will take part in locally organized events across the UK.  While this is a great opportunity for children to get out and play, the Playday campaign raises awareness about serious issues affecting children’s play. For instance, creative play is essential for physical and emotional growth, mental, intellectual and educational development, and for acquiring social and behavioral skills.

Learn more about Playday in the UK.

The recent frigid temperatures may be keeping your kids indoors lately. Since they can’t stay outside long enough to build a snowman, make one indoors!

Our friend Allison at No Time for Flash Cards created an easy snowman craft that is actually a counting and motor skills activity in disguise! In just several steps, your little ones will be practicing their hand-eye coordination and motor skills.

I recently came across a great blog post about the value of creative play featuring an interview with Susan Linn, Director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.  Linn is also the author of The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World, which focuses on the notable shift in the way our children play in today’s world.  This book explores how we’ve gone from encouraging imaginative play and engagement in make believe to giving games, toys, and DVDs that lead children into defined role learning and stifling their growth and development.

This post begins with a description of a simple technique Linn used at a workshop dedicated to creative play.  Linn presented several puppets and asked each attendee to describe specific attributes about each character.  The first puppet introduced was an ordinary sock puppet and the final character introduced was Cookie Monster, a beloved character from Sesame Street. The variety of the responses received for the ordinary sock puppet and the limited responses received for Cookie Monster easily proved Linn’s point; we need to give kids open-ended opportunities to play, rather than force certain associations onto them.

In this interview, Linn responds to basic questions that many parents may have asked about before but not received the answers. Questions like, why is television really so “bad” for kids?  How could a few minutes here and there actually negatively affect their development?  She also gives her opinion on the “Mozart Effect,” the theory that classical music can enhance children’s intelligence, and why she believes it is essentially false.  She does however recognize that music is an important part of childhood development.

Linn’s answers are easy to understand, based on research and her own field experiences, and she exhibits true empathy towards parents. The information presented in this post is a valuable reference for parents and caregivers who believe in the power of creative play.