In 1989 The United Nations committee on the Rights of the Child named PLAY as a childhood right. Since then, PLAY has become a highly researched topic and a way to maximize childhood development and learning.
What is Play?
Play is what “people do when they follow their own ideas, in their own way,
Getting Serious about Play, Department for culture, media, and Sport
and for their own reasons”.
Dr. Stuart Brown spent his career studying play. He defined 7 properties of play: 1) Purposelessness, 2) Voluntary, 3) Inherent Attraction, 4) Freedom from Time, 5) Diminished Self-Consciousness, 6) Improvisational Potential, and 7) Continuation of Desire. (https://humanperformance.ie/the-properties-of-play/).
Put another way, PLAY has no practical value, is free from obligation, is inherently motivated, makes us lose track of time, relieves us from concern about what others think, is serendipitous, and feels like freedom.
We now know that play isn’t just important in childhood, it has benefits across the lifespan!
I have been lucky enough to have some opportunities to study and discuss play. I have created a series of emails on the topic of play with links to some great sources and conversations.
I would love to share them with you.