CreativePlay Plus: Ideas in Play and Child Development

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?

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.

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.

I know this isn’t an original thought, but it recently occurred to me that children at play and scientists at work have a lot in common.  Both seem to start with the same question, What if?  What if I put this big block on top of this little one?  What if I’m the mommy and you’re the baby?  What if I drop a heavy ball and a light ball? Which one hits the ground first?

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Attack Force move What If is the starting point for almost any problem solving.

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• The baby seems fussier than usual.  What if you try dancing to Roy Orbison while holding her over your shoulder?  How about Madonna?

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What If also drives art. In fact, very little that is new comes into existence without a What If first.

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• Impressionism was largely an answer to the question, “What if you paint the feeling of things, instead of their surfaces?”
• Mozart asked, “What if I play it softer; louder; faster; fancier; slower; in ¾ time?” And there you have it: theme and variations.

For What If to work its magic, the player-solver-artist needs a space, some objects, tools to work on them, and most important the assurance that not too much can go wrong.

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I don’t think you need to teach your child to play.  But you can set an example by taking a playful approach to life.

• What if you turn left, instead of right the way you normally go? What if you take the contents of your junk drawer and make something? What if you put a carrot top in a bowl of grape juice? Will it sprout? Will you get a blue carrot?

Being a playful parent yourself may help your child feel comfortable wondering What If and feel secure exploring their growing curiosities.

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Halloween is a great time to have some fun combining a learning activity — shape identification — with one of the best-loved activities of the season – pumpkin carving!

Shape identification is an important skill for children to practice and learn, starting as early as nursery and pre-school.  When children recognize, identify, and become able to name different shapes, they are learning to tie words (such as “Square” or “Circle”) to mathematical concepts, forming a foundation for later learning in this area.

If you plan on integrating shape identification lessons into your evening of pumpkin carving, your best bet is to have more than one pumpkin on hand, because as with all creative play

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-related activities, you want to let your kids direct the activity themselves.  This will likely result in lots of fun and creative ideas, but also a great big mess, so it’s good to have more than one “subject” to carve on (with an adult’s help and safety knives, of course!).

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Starting out, let your kids draw on the pumpkin with a marker (you can always help them if they’re too young for drawing) in order to create whatever face or scene they want on the pumpkin.  Have them name the shapes they’re drawing as they go.  Then, go back and carve the shapes into the pumpkin, again having them give names to the shapes as the pumpkin carving progresses.

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Remember, this should be fun – don’t feel like the design on the pumpkin needs to look like anything in particular.  Pumpkin carving is an act of creativity for your kids, so let them do what they’d like with their pumpkin, even if it may not look exactly like something you’d generally want on your front porch!  In this case, shape identification skills are simply a helpful by-product of a wonderful opportunity to spend some quality time with your children.

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Of course, pumpkin carving isn’t the only way to help your children enhance their shape identification skills.  Try a 20-minute shape walk on one of these last beautiful days of fall, and help your kids get active while learning at the same time!

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The other day, a friend of mine gave me a book. The title of the book is not important.* What is important is the story behind the gift.

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My friend is a pediatrician and mother of three children. As it turns out, they are all star students. The oldest two are attending famous universities, and the youngest has been accepted to a top school as well. Not that getting into a great college is the only index of success, or even the best one. But it is notable that all three children have chosen to play the academic game, and all are finding success.

Being John Malkovich movies It often doesn’t work this way in families. There are families in which one child—often the oldest – is a great student, but the siblings who follow aren’t. They behave as if the “great student” role has been taken, and they choose different paths. One becomes “the artist,” another “the jock,” and perhaps another “the clown.” Of course, it is possible that these roles really are the right ones for each child. But in many cases I think that what drives children is a fear of competition with a sibling who has already staked out a strong position.

In fact, this dynamic did affect my friend’s family. Early on, the eldest son established himself as someone who loved reading and learning. His younger sister, looking up at this budding star, at first shied away from books. How could she hope to compete? And yet, my friend was able to help her daughter get past this fear and develop her own love of learning.

This key, my friend explained, was to find a book that her daughter would fall in love with, a book that was very different from any of the ones that her oldest son favored. The book my friend found for her daughter – and the one she gave to me – was a book of poems about colors and flowers. To a girl who loved pretty things, the appeal of the book was instant. Soon, the girl was reading more and more and writing her own poems. With the third child, it was a different spark that ignited the love of reading.

I’m telling you this story not because all girls need to love flowers, and not even because all children need to love books. I am telling it to you because it shows how a gifted parent finds the keys to unlock each child’s talents.

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Dumb Bell of the Yukon divx A family is an ecosystem, with each organism striving to find a niche. In a family with several children, it takes a tuned-in parent to give each child the space to follow his or her own light. Once that happens, neither competition – nor the fear of competition – controls the direction they grown in.

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“The Power to Play- From Trash to Treasure” is a traveling toy exhibit featuring toys handcrafted by children in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The Power to Play exhibit recognizes that play is an essential part of a healthy childhood and appreciates the creativity and resourcefulness of children in developing countries.

If you’re unable to visit the exhibition in person I highly recommend browsing the Childfund International* website and reading about the featured children. You’ll experience firsthand how each child made their toy and the pride and joy they felt through their creation.  Perhaps your child will be inspired to make their own toy!  Or maybe they will have fun learning to make a toy made by a child from across the world!

We would love to hear how your child creates toys. What ways have you noticed your child recycling materials to make a new toy?

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The “The Power to Play- From Trash to Treasure” is currently in Los Angeles, California at The Museum of Tolerance through December 31, 2009 and at the Breman Museum in Atlanta, Georgia October 18, 2009-January 10, 2010.

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*Childfund International is an organization inspire d by the potential in all children and seeks to support children not only to survive but to thrive.

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One of the primary benefits of creative play is the development of specific important skills in children.  However, the introduction of so many narrowly-focused toys and games since the 1950s has actually shown to impede the growth of children’s cognitive abilities, most specifically in an area called executive function.  This is truly one of the most important skill sets children can acquire during their formative years. голова болит секс голова болит секс

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are much like other cognitive skills in that they must be learned. These skills include planning, cognitive flexibility, abstract thinking, and self regulation. However, the way executive functions develop is a bit more complex than with other learned abilities. Research is increasingly showing the way kids play now, versus how they played earlier in the century (directed play versus creative play), could very well be the leading cause of the overall decrease in executive functioning in children.

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Because poor executive function is associated with negative outcomes such as high drop-out rates, drug use, and crime, getting back to a style of play that encourages the development of these “higher skills” is extremely important for putting kids on the right track early in life.  One of the best ways to do this is through the introduction of creative play early and often.

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Although play had been relegated to the margins of childhood development training during the last part of the century in large part to the emphasis on standardized testing, a push from researchers in the area of creative play has put it back in the spotlight as an invaluable tool, both in the classroom, and at home.  As these researchers continue to push forward, creative play will likely be even more widely accepted as a natural way to teach kids the skills they need in order to succeed both now, and later in life.

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Your voice is music to your child’s ears, even if you don’t think of yourself as the next American Idol.  Singing to your child and with your child is a special form of communication!

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Many parents naturally sing in a range lower than what infants and toddlers can best hear and imitate vocally.  When singing to your child, listen to the vocal sounds they are making and try to match your pitch to theirs.  This will enable your child to “sing back” – at first coos and hums, years later with more accuracy.  (For those readers who have studied music, the ideal range for vocalizing with young children is D to A above middle C.)

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Also, when singing, make eye contact with your child.  Enjoy this special form of communication!

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