<back

Play: It’s Serious Business

When I think back to my childhood, my mind returns to those long summer days playing with the kids in my neighborhood. We’d spend hours outside making up elaborate games of hide-and-seek, building forts, and playing in the ditches and dirt mounds around my street. Our time was spent planning, building, imagining, exploring, taking risks, negotiating, and sharing time together.   Perhaps you have similar memories from your own childhood—times when you could create an indoor fort, a tree house outside, or maybe transform an old refrigerator box into your own special place.

Here at Chicago Children’s Museum, we take play very seriously. Over the past few months, we have been collecting play memories from teens and adults all over Chicago and beyond. So far, we have collected over 175 surveys, in which people share their favorite play memory and the reasons why this memory is special to them. These memories are from people ranging in age from 13 to 67,  who grew up in all corners of Chicago, from Queens to rural Utah, and from Cleveland to Tanzania.  People recall such activities as building, imaginary play, making up games, songs, or theatrical plays, cooking up potions and mud pies, and engaging in physical activities like bike riding, roller skating, swimming, and climbing trees.

This year alone, play has been the focus of a number of documentaries, radio programs, and news articles, including Alix Spiegel’s story, “Old Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills,” on NPR, the PBS documentary “Where Do the Children Play?” and The New York Times Magazine article “Taking Play Seriously.”  All of these pieces extol the benefits of play, while sharing a growing concern that children today don’t have enough opportunities to play.  Joan Alman, chair of the Alliance for Childhood, states that “[t]he disappearance of play is a tragedy not yet fully explored or understood.  Research and experience suggest that today’s children will not develop as well cognitively, socially, or emotionally as those whose childhoods were rich with play. “

We hope you’ll visit our returning summer exhibit, Block Party, where children can explore, express, create, and construct their own storylines.  You’ll notice a variety of open-ended loose parts, materials children can manipulate to exercise their vivid imaginations in a real-world setting.  Instead of the run-of-the-mill plastic play food sets, we provide wood, felt, yarn, wool, ribbons, sponges, squeeze bottles, dried herbs, and more for children to create their own inventive concoctions. Instead of pre-made costumes, we provide fabric squares for kids to make their own costumes. 

Our hope is that exhibits like Block Party can inspire playful ideas at home.  Materials that inspire play can be inexpensive and easy to find.  Supporting play and learning in your child’s life doesn’t have to cost a penny or require you to participate at all times.  The best toys, I believe, are 90% child and 10% toy, inviting imagination, open-ended play, and manipulation.   For example, compare two puppets: one that is based on a television program and one that your child creates.  The first one already has a name, personality, and even snippets of dialogue.   Now consider how much a child can add to a homemade puppet created from a sock, some glue, paper, beads, and other craft materials.   Similarly, while children can enjoy commercially-made playhouses, think how much richer the experience when they create their own structure with boxes, tape, sheets and blankets.  It can transform into a house, a hospital, an airplane, or a boat.  Often, it’s the inexpensive choice that encourages your children’s critical thinking skills and imagination.

If you are ever in doubt about how you can support your child’s healthy development through play, think back to your favorite play memory.  What was best about that time?  Why are the memories still so strong and, perhaps, so important?  Whenever the world challenges your child’s time and creativity, let your mind return to your days of play--or what your dream days of play would have ideally been.  With that in mind,  give your child the gift of time—to just hang out with friends, to be a little bored, to root around for something to do and stuff to do it with.   Sometimes, it’s what we don’t plan for children that turns out to be what’s most valuable.

Resources

The Why's Have It! Why and Why Not to Include Loose Parts on the Playground, by Jim Dempsey PhD and Dr. Eric Strickland PhD

Where Do the Children Play?

Old Fashioned Play Builds Seriously Skills, by Alix Spiegal, NPR

Taking Play Seriously, by Robin Marantz Henig, The New York Times

Alliance for Childhood

Children's Special Places: Exploring the Role of Forts, Dens, and Bush Houses in Middle Childhood, by David Sobel

The Power of Play: Learning What Comes Naturally, by David Elkind

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv

© 2008 Chicago Children's Museum

top